


J<. 




















CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION 
IN THE SOUTH 



CHRISTIAN 

RECONSTRUCTION IN 

THE SOUTH 



BY 



H. PAUL DOUGLASS 




BOSTON 
THE PILGRIM PRESS 

NEW YORK CHICAGO 



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O^^ 



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■Fi,/5- 



Copyright, 1909 
By H. p. Douglass 



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THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 



To 
THE MEMORY OF HENRY LEE 

one of " the unfit " 
of whom the world was not worthy 



PREFACE 

THE writing of this book was undertaken at the re- 
quest of the Executive Committee of the American 
Missionary Association and primarily with its con- 
stituency in mind. From the work of that organization, 
therefore, with which the author is personally familiar, the 
illustrative matter has largely been drawn, especially in 
those chapters which describe missionary operations con- 
cretely. I have tried to interpret that work in its repre- 
sentative character and in relation to that of the whole 
group of agencies making for the complete Americaniza- 
tion of the South. Further and particularly the attempt 
has been to provide a sociological perspective and back- 
ground for the problems presented by the undeveloped 
peoples of the South. The approach has been through a 
particular group of interests, the purpose to throw light 
on the larger issue involved. 

The author misses in his book that deliberately lauda- 
tory mood which, by the recent usage of high authority, 
seems to be the proper way for the Northerner to discuss 
the South. Beginning with the Ogden parties, a succes- 
sion of distinguished Yankees have journeyed thither on 
all manner of speech-making occasions. There is so much 
compelling praise in that marvelously awakening section 
that these gentlemen have had little difficulty in filling the 
time allotted by program maker and interviewer with 
merited congratulations. The echoes of their speeches as 
reported back home have largely given tone to latter-day 
Northern thought on Southern problems. But one cannot 
easily be at the same time both guest and philosopher. 

n 



PREFACE 



Socrates, in Plato's " Banquet," when his turn comes to 
speak, assumes ironically the vein of his companions. 
When they protest that he is manifestly insincere he re- 
joins that the occasion demands politeness rather than 
truth. The Northern orators who have had popular hear- 
ing have spoken as guests and have played up to the 
occasion. Consequently nearly all the plain and hard- 
hitting telling of truth about the South is coming from 
Southerners. 

There is a striking contrast between some of their ut- 
terances and those which the North has been hearing from 
its own authorities. The professor of English, for exam- 
ple, in a Southern university made an original and highly 
successful attempt to get interest into his students' literary 
themes : he assigned the race problem as a topic. The 
resulting product did not lack in interest. Under the cap- 
tion " The Young Southerner and the Negro " ^ the pro- 
fessor summarizes his experiment as follows : — 

These, then, are the views of forty-eight young men 
from seven states of the South. They unanimously 
opposed any idea of social equality ; thirty-nine were 
opposed to higher education of the African ; twenty- 
five favored only reading, writing, and a trade ; thirty 
believed that he should possess no political rights ; 
nine were without faith in his religion ; eleven believed 
him to have been a better man in slavery days ; thirty- 
one declared that he must always be a common ser- 
vant to the white man; twenty-five thought that he 
possessed no ability in self-government ; seventeen 
were in favor of retaining him in the South; seven 
favored giving him a separate territory ; three fa- 
vored " black cities " ; nine believed that his dissipa- 

' South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. viii, pp. 117 ff. 



PREFACE 

tion and uncleanliness would solve the problem by 
exterminating him; twelve were content to leave the 
whole question to Providence ; seventeen declared that 
fornication and the resulting amalgamation of the 
races were endangering the white blood of the South ; 
ten were opposed to lynching; and fourteen consid- 
ered a race war highly probable. Remember, once 
more, that these writers are not a crowd of ruffians 
from the lower strata of Southern life, but represen- 
tatives of refined families, and of a student body, 
ninety-six per cent of whom are confessing Chris- 
tions and forty per cent candidates for the ministry. 
Is such a study of existing tendencies just ground 
for optimism? . . . Are not the indications plain 
that the black man is to be restrained, hampered, 
browbeaten, discouraged within the next quarter of 
a century as never before in all the bitter years of 
his existence on this continent? 

In a similar vein of courageous candor the Rev. Quincy 
Ewing, a Southerner of Southerners, has recently diag- 
nosed the spirit of his section.^ The race problem, he says, 
is not the negro as an objective burden to civilization. It 
is not his economic inefficiency, for the South wants him 
as a laborer; nor his excessive criminality, for he is not 
more criminal than whites of corresponding social status ; 
nor his ignorance, for according to Governor Vardaman, 
at least, it is the difficult, educated negro, not the docile, 
Ignorant one who is the burden. Neither has the South- 
erner any personal aversion to the negro race. On the 
other hand, Mr. Ewing asserts, the race problem is dis- 
tinctly subjective. It originates in the white man's mind, 
in his convictions that the negro is " not human in the 
sense that he is human, not entitled to the exercise of human 

' Atlantic Monthly, " The Heart of the Race Problem," vol. ciii, pp. 389 ff . 

fTiil 



PREFACE 



rights in the sense that he is entitled to the exercise of 
them." It is not what the negro now is or is not, but 
" how to keep him what he is in relation to the white man, 
how to prevent his achieving or becoming what would jus- 
tify the belief on his part or on the part of other people 
that he and the white man stand on common human 
ground." In Southern usage, then, " bad nigger " means 
not the criminal negro, but the one who shows signs of 
achievement and thus gets out of focus with the traditional 
view. " The problem arises only when people of one race 
are minded to adopt and act upon some policy more or 
less oppressive and repressive in dealing with peoples of 
another race. It is the existence of such a policy, become 
traditional and supported by immovable conviction, which 
constitutes the race problem of the Southern states." 

What shall we say to these things? In answering cer- 
tain comments of Northern papers on the street duel in 
which Senator Carmack was killed, the Richmond Times- 
Dispatch characterized such affairs as typical of the South 
but not characteristic. It further explains the distinction 
to mean that, while there are undoubtedly a considerable 
body of Southerners who approve and practise the street 
duel, it is not a trait of those who are profoundly repre- 
sentative of the life of their section. Now here are the 
attitudes of the professor's forty-eight young Southerners, 
and over against them the wholly opposing attitude of 
the able and courageous Review which publishes the study. 
Using the Times-Dispatches distinction, they are ahke 
typical of the South; but which is characteristic.'' 

One prefers to answer that the issue is still in doubt. 
The South is not homogeneous, hence cannot have a single 
sectional character. Since the war it has not reached 
stable equilibrium. It is in intellectual and moral transi- 



[ viii 



PREFACE 



tion. Its sifting is under way. The battle is on but the 
end is not yet. God defend the right! But if forced to 
generahze on the basis of present facts, one would have to 
confess that the tendencies represented by the young South- 
erners have political and social power beyond that of the 
South Atlantic Quarterly and its kind. The forty-eight 
are with the maj ority ; the Trinity College group are in 
the minority. The repressive policies which Mr. Ewing 
expounds are characteristic, his personal attitude is ex- 
ceptional. In view of these facts the author of this book 
sorrowfully finds his olive branch less wide-spreading than 
those of ex-President Eliot and President Taft seem to be. 

The book is dedicated to the memory of a negro teacher 
of manual training who died of tuberculosis at the age of 
thirty. The individual is typical of his race and his race 
of humanity. All stocks of men are always being sifted 
by one or another of the great secular processes. In con- 
templating the destiny of others, men stand in the shadow 
of their own and are led to the ultimate question. What 
significance in the economy of existence have those who 
go to the rubbish heap of temporal history.'' Are the 
verdicts of sociology as to human values necessarily the 
verdict of the Last Judgment.? 

No soul which hopes for itself can call that august ver- 
dict good unless the universe, somehow and somewhere, 
saves and utilizes much which fails of measurable human 
fruition. For the " unfit " (speaking as the evolutionist 
does) are infinitely outnumbered and outweighed by our 
multitudes of bankrupt aspirations, those subtle waifs of 
the inner life, dearer to the heart than the acknowledged 
sons of the home. Their fate — the fate of the " unfit " 
portions of ordinarily " fit " experience — constitutes a 
graver philosophical problem than the mere temporal fall- 

fk] 



PREFACE 

ing out of nations or races. If existence fails here it fails 

altogether. 

" What hand and brain went ever paired ? 
What heart alike conceived and dared ? 
What act proved all its thought had been? 
What wUl but felt the fleshly screen?" 

If existence be good these discrepancies in the most for- 
tunate experience must somehow find healing in a reuniting 
of the scattered elements of life. Whatever earth or seas 
hold these dead must give them up. 

Such is the salvation of the most fortunate, and it carries 
with it a possible salvation for the least fortunate. Where 
the most fortunate find their indispensable completion, the 
least fortunate may repair a whole life-failure. Death 
logically is no more unconquerable than unhappiness. 

" All that I hoped to be and was not comforts me." 

If so, maybe eternal values are buried in the secularly 
unfit and, for the idealist at least, the ultimate back- 
ground of the solemn sifting of humanity is a universe 
of unfathomed possibility which the Christian confesses as 
" the life everlasting." 

Many of my fellow workers and officers of the Associa- 
tion with other friends have aided me by information and 
suggestions. I thank them. I am particularly indebted 
to Rev. William H. Holloway ; also, especially for help in 
the sociological interpretation of the race problem, to my 
long-time friend, Prof. Carl Kelsey. 

New Yokk, June, 1909. 



[^] 



CONTENTS 

I. Tempering the Body Together 

Pass 

I. " Men of Every Tribe and Tongue and People and Nation " . 17 

II, The Unassimilated Populations 19 

III. The New Struggle for the Union 25 

IV. The Place Problem 28 

V. The Underlying Struggle for Democracy 32 

VI. Competency of Missionary Judgment on National Problems . 35 

II. The South as Missionary Ground 

I. Sectional vs. National Problems 44 

II. The South as Missionary Ground 46 

III. The Division of Labor between Assimilating Forces .... 66 

III. The Sifting of the South 

I. The Two Souths and the Two Southerners 66 

II. The Varied South 70 

III. The Crisis of the Sifting 77 

IV. Study of the Well-Sifted Negro Community 86 

IV. The Sifting of Southern Sentiment 

I. Sifting the Hearts of Men 99 

II. The Color-Line 116 

III. Clues to Prophecy 119 

V. What the Negro has Done for Himself 

I. Success with a Minimum of Assistance 127 

II. Within the National Life 132 

III. Within Racial Lines 140 

_ 



CONTENTS 



VI. A Background for Black 

PAoa 

I. Dubious Verdicts from Conflicting Facts 166 

II. Need of a Sociological Background 169 

III. Alleged Racial Traits and their Sociological Explanations . . 171 



VII. Typical Missionary Activities 

I. Spirit and Policy 209 

II. Strategic Location 211 

III. Classification of Institutions 212 

A. Ungraded Schools 213 

B. Graded Elementary Schools 216 

C. Secondary Schools in Cities 223 

D. Rured Secondary Schools 229 



VIII. Typical Missionary Activities 
(co7itinued) 

III. Classification of Institutions (co»/in«ed) 237 

E. Girls' Seminaries 237 

F. Colleges and Universities 240 

G. Specialized Instruction 247 

IV. The Outreach of the Mission Schools 253 



IX. Problems and Programs of Negro 
Education 

I. Higher vs. Industrial Education 267 

II. The General Educational Parallel 278 

III. Expert Interpretations of the Lessons of Experience . . . . 281 

IV. Principles of Democratic Education 295 



X. The Old Men of the Mountains 

I. The Problem of the Mountains 304 

II. How the Mountain Man Lives 312 

III. Mountain Life Reflected in the Mountaineer's Traits .... 317 



[xii] 



CONTENTS 



XI. The Passing of the Mountaineer 

Page 

I. The Exploitation of the Mountains by Industry 335 

II. The Exploitation of the Mountains by Leisure 343 

III. The Uplift of the Mountains by Education 350 

XII. Does the Purpose of God Thwart the 

Spirit of Christ ? 

I. The Moral Sifting of the Nation on the Race Issue .... 367 

II, Moral Struggle Complicated by Intellectual Difficulties . . . 369 

III. Examination of the Alleged Verdict of Science 373 

IV. The Purpose of God and the Race Question 388 



[ xiii ] 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Pass 

Tenants on School Farm, Brick School, Enfield, N. C 28 

Carnegie Building, Fessenden Academy, Fla 28 

Two Congregational Deacons of Rural Churches 36 

Agricultural Peasant of the Black Belt 42 

City Slum, Tradd Street, Charleston, S. C 42 

A. F. Beard, D.D 62 

Old Memphis T8 

New Jackson 78 

Home of Negro Landlord, Thomasville, Ga 88 

Negro Artisan and Street of Artisans' Homes, Thomasville, Ga. . 88 

Negro Business Men's Homes, Thomasville, Ga 92 

Negro Drug Store and Proprietor, Thomasville, Ga. 92 

Negro Rural Home, Piedmont Region 134 

Negro Business Street, Thomasville, Ga 134 

Representative Negroes 140 

Ingram Chapel, J. K. Brick School, N. C 148 

First Congregational Church, Atlanta, Ga 148 

The Yamacraw Section, Savannah, Ga. 152 

Negro Tenements, Charleston, S. C 152 

Aged Breadwinners 156 

Servants' Quarters in Rear of a Modern Memphis Home .... 160 

The Cotton Levee, New Orleans, with Negro Longshoremen . . . 160 

Transportation, Liberty Co., Ga 220 

Homes in the Land of Mud-Daub 220 

The Environment of Dorchester Academy 232 

Primary Grade, Andersonville, Ga 236 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Page 

Graduating Class, Straight University, New Orleans 236 

Swayne Hall, Talladega College ; Chase Hall, Fisk University . . 242 

Jubilee Hall, Fisk University ; DeForest Chapel, Talladega College 242 

Strieby Hall and Beard Hall, Tougaloo University 242 

Cotton Picking on School Farm 250 

Football Team, Burrell Normal Institute, Florence, Ala 250 

College Choir, Fisk University 256 

CoUege Y. M. C. A., Fisk University 256 

Domestic Science Laboratorj', Talladega College 280 

Blacksmith Shop, Tougaloo University 280 

Theological Graduates, Talladega College 298 

Trained Nurses, Talladega College 298 

Primitive Industry of the Mountains 310 

Modern Industry of the New South 310 

Domestic Grinding-Mill 318 

Old Water-Mill 318 

The Mountain Weaver 332 

The Cotton-Mill 332 

Black Mountain Academy, Evarts, Ky 350 

Elementary Grades, Black Mountain Academy 350 

Professors and Students, Atlanta Theological Seminary .... 360 

Girls' Dormitory, Piedmont College 360 

Typical Makers of Evidence on the Race Problem 388 



[xvi] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION 
IN THE SOUTH 

I. TEMPERING THE BODY 
TOGETHER 

I. "MEN OF EVERY TRIBE AND TONGUE AND 
PEOPLE AND NATION" 

IF the band of Mayflower Pilgrims had been composed 
of the same stuff as the present nation, and in like 
proportions, it would have included twelve negroes, 
a Porto Rican mulatto, and a mongrel of mingled Indian, 
Chinese, Japanese, and Hawaiian blood. Thirteen of its 
number would have been Pilgrims by adoption only, and 
twenty more the children of at least one non-Pilgrim 
parent. Hardly one half would have remained of real 
Pilgrim stock. Picture this strangely varied group kneel- 
ing together in the cabin of the Mayflower to weld itself 
into a " civil body pohtick ! " The task is not lighter now 
that Providence has taken millions for hundreds and scat- 
tered them unevenly over a vast land of imperial natural 
diversities. 

The early struggle for the Union was an attempt to 
harmonize the interests of an essentially homogeneous 
The Earlier stock. They brought, to be sure, some Old- 
Struggle for World animosities to these new shores, born 
the Union pf class struggles or the competitions of 

mother-lands. To these were soon added differences created 
by the new environment. The scant population of the 
thirteen colonies occupied a fringe of seaboard, the widely 

2 [17] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

varied physical resources of which were the basis of eco- 
nomic differences and conflicts. The North naturally be- 
came commercial and industrial, the South rural and 
agricultural. Intercommunication was difficult, and only 
the common danger to their frontier from the French and 
Indians, and the united struggle against England, taught 
the colonists cooperation. They were scarcely able at 
length to write their fateful compromises into a constitu- 
tion. Yet they had all come from a very small region in 
northwestern Europe, where blood and traditions had been 
blended as in no other area. They were predominatingly 
middle-class people, and save for one colony were Protes- 
tants. Their temperamental differences, however deep, had 
been included in a common history and civilization. 

But now the nation includes representatives of the en- 
tire human family in their whole range of physical and 
American In- mental differences. The white, black, yellow, 

stitutions not brown, red, are all Americans. Whatever 

made for Our , . , i i , • <> t 

Present Popu- sunderings untold centuries of diverse expe- 

lation rience and contrasting environment have 

wrought between the most widely separated branches of 
mankind exist between us as fellow citizens and intrude as 
internal problems for our people. Men of every tribe, 
tongue, people, and nation have become members of our 
common life. Our national institutions were not made by 
them nor for them, but were founded upon the ideals of 
a very select human group and never fully applied even 
within that group. Consequently, unless the foundations 
of the Republic are to be changed, and the American of 
our faith ceases to be, the diverse human stuff of the pres- 
ent nation must be inwardly prepared for participation 
in a democratic order of society. Such an order irrevo- 
cably demands that men be fit for it. 



TEMPERING THE BODY TOGETHER 

II. THE UNASSIMILATED POPULATIONS 

The peoples for whom the Americanizing energy of the 
nation has hitherto failed may be considered in three 
groups : 

1. An old and neglected group. In the triumphant 

march of American civilization from east to west across 

TheMoun- *^^ continent there has been one striking 

taineers of the failure. A fragment of an original colonial 

Southern stock in the fastness of the Southern Appa- 

Appalachians i i • • /• i • .i • •!• i- <• 

lacnians remains nxed m the civilization of a 

hundred years ago. They represent the average American 

of Abraham Lincoln's boyhood and are our chief example 

of an " arrested frontier." One finds here 

the human type not to be met elsewhere in the United 
States. He is farmer, hunter, blacksmith, shop- 
keeper, or rude preacher. He is courageous, original, 
reads the sky and forest in lieu of books, and is little 
troubled by the outside world. He could not raise 
cotton, he did not own slaves, and his sympathies were 
with the North rather than with the South in the Civil 
War. His family lives as his great-grandfather's 
family lived, for change is almost unknown. Divi- 
sion of labor has httle place in such society, where 
homespun still prevails. These men are the descend- 
ants of the backwoodsmen who came from the Old 
World, from Pennsylvania, from Virginia, and the 
Carolinas, to the Holston, the French Broad, the Ken- 
tucky, and the Cumberland. Retired from all the 
world, they reveal the effects of a stable environment 
in a remote region.^ 

Akin to the Appalachian mountaineer and of the 
same stock is much of the population of the Ozark re- 

* Brigham, Geographical Influences in American History, p. 102. 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

gion, covering parts of Missouri, Arkansas, and Indian 
Territory. 

The gross population of these regions is over three mil- 
lion, but one must deduct from the problem the inhabitants 
of those valleys with their fertile fields and prosperous cities 
through which civilization from the earliest time has run as 
through a funnel. There is no uniform isolation of the 
mountain population, and no accurate enumeration of its 
submerged element is possible. Yet it is clear that here 
is the largest and most valuable fragment of the original 
American stock not fully assimilated to the national life. 

Under this same category of old and neglected peoples 
must be numbered the " Greaser " type — a product of 
rp, q . , the ancient mingling of Spaniard and Indian. 
Indian Mon- Its chief seats are New Mexico and Arizona, 
grel Popula- Its proportion of illiteracy greatly exceeds 
that of any other part of our population 
classified as " white." It constitutes a small but appealing 
problem for national solution. 

2. A new and unexpected group. Our national 

T . ^. complacency with reference to foreign immi- 

Immigration \ •{ i i i • i i 

from Eastern gration suffered a sudden check with the un- 

and Southern foreseen change of the character of that 

urope immigration, dating from about 1882. 

Tliis change was the rapid shifting of the sources 
of immigration from Western to Eastern and South- 
ern Europe. A line drawn across the continent of 
Europe from northeast to southwest, separating the 
Scandinavian Peninsula, the British Isles, Germany, 
and France, from Russia, Austria-Hungary, Italy, 
and Turkey, separates countries not only of distinct 
races, but also of distinct civilizations. It separates 
Protestant Europe from Catholic Europe ; it scpa- 

[20l 



TEMPERING THE BODY TOGETHER 

rates countries of representative institutions and 
popular government from absolute monarchies ; it 
separates lands where education is universal from 
lands where illiteracy predominates ; it separates 
manufacturing countries, progressive agriculture, 
and skilled labor from primitive hand industries, back- 
ward agriculture, and unskilled labor ; it separates an 
educa,ted, thrifty peasantry from a peasantry scarcely 
a single generation removed from serfdom; it sepa- 
rates Teutonic races from Latin, Slav, Semitic, and 
Mongolian races. When the sources of American im- 
migration are shifted from the Western countries so 
nearly allied to our own, to Eastern countries so re- 
mote in the main attributes of Western civilization, 
the change is one that should challenge the attention 
of every citizen. Such a change has occurred, and it 
needs only a comparison of the statistics of immigra- 
tion for the year 1882 with those of 1902 and 1906 to 
gee its extent. While the total number of immigrants 
from Europe and Asiatic Turkey was approximately 
equal in 1882 and 1902, yet in 1882 Western Europe 
furnished 87 per cent of the immigrants, and in 1902 
only 22 per cent, while the share of Southeastern 
Europe and Asiatic Turkey increased from 13 per 
cent in 1882 to 78 per cent in 1902. During twenty 
years the immigration of the Western races most 
nearly related to those which have fashioned Ameri- 
can institutions declined more than 75 per cent, while 
the immigrants of Eastern and Southern races, un- 
trained in self-government, increased nearly sixfold.^ 

In other words, for more than two-thirds of a century 

our incoming population came almost exclusively from 

those lands which were working out with us the great 

democratic tendency. Some had progressed more slowly 

' Commons, Races and Immigrants in America, p. 69. 

fin 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

and less successfully than we, but the general tendency 
was the same, and their children came to these shores in- 
wardly disposed to the ideals and institutions which we 
were creating. The newest comers are the victims of a too 
abrupt transition. There is a gulf to be bridged before 
they can be made worthy participants in our national 
hfe. 

Another group of the new and unexpected peoples has 
come to us by annexation. It is the fruit of the so-called 
The Fruits of imperialistic tendency of our nation. Hawaii 
Annexation: brought US about 154,000 people, occupying 
Hawau eight mid-Pacific islands, with a total area 

about that of New Jersey. No part of our territory shows 
so much ethnic variety. Natives and half-castes form a 
dwindling half of the population. Southern Europe is 
represented by 8000 Portuguese. The most aggressive 
element is Oriental, predominatingly Japanese, but includ- 
ing 25,000 Chinese, and latterly Koreans, and even Hin- 
doos. As to religion. Buddhism is a close second to Chris- 
tianity. The ruling and exploiting Anglo-Saxon minority 
shows little desire to equalize opportunity for these Ameri- 
cans of other blood. 

Porto Rico, which is three-fourths as large as Connecti- 
cut, is one of the most densely populated parts of our do- 
main. Its people number nearly a million 
and consist of perhaps 100,000 pure Span- 
iards, 400,000 negroes and mulattoes, and 500,000 " Porto 
Ricans," which means people of Spanish and Indian mixed 
blood. Nowhere on the mainland is any such degree of 
illiteracy known as prevails here. The nominal Roman 
Catholic Christianity leaves almost everything to be de- 
sired. The superstition, illiteracy, poverty, and vice of 
the Porto Rican are all un-American and constitute a 

[22] 



TEMPERING THE BODY TOGETHER 

national problem which has come to us so unexpectedly that 
we have not jet properly appreciated it. 

Alaska as a habitation for Americans and a possible 
seat of civilization is so recent a possibility that its popu- 
lation belongs to the unexpected group. As 
a national domain it dates back to 1867, but 
its mining camps are the newest example of a frontier 
waiting for complete Americanization, and its perhaps 
25,000 Eskimos and Indians present our only remaining 
opportunity for justice to the original American. 

3. An exceptional group. He ignores the central clue 
to our history who forgets that for important elements of 
our people American democracy broke down 
from the beginning. To Jefferson, the most 
idealistic and thoroughgoing of the founders of the na- 
tion, it was a perplexity and grief that there existed a 
slave population which even his faith could not think of 
as included in equal citizenship. Though trembling " to 
think that God is just," he, with most good men of his 
day, comforted himself with the thought that the contradic- 
tion was for a brief time and that the neg'ro would soon be 
emancipated and deported. Now every eighth American 
is black, and beside this dark and massive problem every 
other problem of assimilation dwindles to insignificance. 

The Indian presented no such original perplexity to 
conscience. New England had indeed attempted some- 
what half-heartedly to evangelize him with- 
out much thought of how he was to be 
treated afterward, but the national policy from the be- 
ginning was to consider him an alien with whom treaties 
were to be made as with foreign nations. Those who tried 
to Christianize him were always counted as foreign mis- 
sionaries. Words cannot tell the bitterness of the struggle 

_ 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

that dispossessed him ; and however benign and inevitable 
the result, the methods employed were unspeakably shame- 
ful and brutal. Fragments of his race were isolated and 
engulfed by, rather than received into, the nation — as one 
swallows a speck of dust with his food. The remnant of 
less than one hundred and twenty-five thousand remains 
on the reservation, but is rapidly being scattered among 
the nation by the distribution of lands in severalty. This 
means the sundering of all ancient ties — the social foun- 
dations of the Indian's higher life and aspirations. Forced 
to merge himself in a social order abhorrent to his deepest 
instincts, he presents to-day his most pathetic appeal for a 
tolerance tempered with pedagogic sense to ease his passing. 
More than two hundred thousand Orientals, chiefly on 
our Pacific Coast, constitute another anomalous group, and 
the only one the treatment of which involves 
us in complication with foreign nations. Re- 
striction of Chinese immigration was attempted as early 
as 1854 by the State of California, and the nation com- 
pletely shut out the Chinaman as a competitor of American 
labor by the treaty of 1880 and law of 1888. This re- 
striction goes far beyond and is radically different in prin- 
ciple from that practised toward any other nation. " In 
the case of European immigration, the burden of proof 
is upon the immigration authorities to show that the im- 
migrant should be excluded. In the case of the Chinese, 
the burden of proof is on the immigrant to show that he 
should be admitted." -^ The recent influx of Japanese, 
which mounted to 14,000 in 1906, has been checked, 
temporarily at least, by the limitation of emigration on 
the part of their home government. A few Koreans 
and Hindoos have been imported as scouting par- 

* Commons, Races and Immigrants in America, p. 235. 
_ 



TEMPERING THE BODY TOGETHER 

ties of great industrial armies which will surely come 
unless our anomalous policy of exclusion is extended to 
them also. More than any other group the Orientals are 
feared as tending to depress the American standard of 
living. On the other hand no other is so quick to resent 
or so able to revenge by war or boycott the indignities 
put upon them. Thus facing the Pacific, American prob- 
lems take on international scope and broaden into problems 
of the relation of all men upon the earth. 

III. THE NEW STRUGGLE FOR THE UNION 

It is against increasing odds that the nation to-day re- 
news the task of creating a union out of diverse elements. 

„. „ J. If we had not the deeper problem of making 

rioneer Londi- . n ^ <• • -v • -e 

tionsmade men inwardly fit for our civilization, if we 

Assimilation were confronted only by the older and easier 
^^^ problem of adjusting conflicting sectional in- 

terests, our task would still be harder ; for the fathers of 
the Republic achieved political union and the nation as- 
similated its earlier immigrants under very unique condi- 
tions. To be sure, America continued European inequali- 
ties in the class-governments of Massachusetts, Virginia, 
and indeed most of the colonies ; but social privilege largely 
melted away as men turned to face the West. They found 
there an empire of free land. The frontier knew no social 
advantage, and its temper came to dominate the Union. 
Men were not prejudged and socially placed according to 
a conventional scheme. All prizes were open to the primi- 
tive virtues. Men struggled against nature rather than 
with one another. As soon, however, as the land was oc- 
cupied and they turned to human competition. It was seen 
that the dominant classes were not inwardly neighborly 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

nor tolerant of men of other types. Our hospitable soil 
hitherto, and not our brotherly spirit, has Americanized 
the alien. 

Now our absorbing power has certainly suffered diminu- 
tion. Americanism — no matter whose — was of course 
"The Great bound to change under the pressure of chang- 
Dilution" ing social forces. But our departure from 

the original type has been abnormally rapid because of 
the " great dilution " of national character by alien blood 
and spirit. The prior question now is, Who shall Ameri- 
canize the American.'' Witness the indispensable and highly 
successful attempt by the Hebrew Educational Alliance in 
New York City to prepare the incoming Jew for intelli- 
gent citizenship. No one can praise too highly its results ; 
yet no one can pretend that the Americanism to which they 
are introduced is that of Puritan Massachusetts, or old 
Virginia, or even of the Teutonized Middle West. It may 
be better; it is certainly not identical. 

The issue, moreover, is not whether we have passed the 
theoretical danger point in the saturation of the nation 
^ .. , by alien stuff. It is that of its abnormal 
Aliens at the congestion at our weakest spots, namely, in 
Weak Spots of the cities and in geographical regions of little 
assimilative vigor. The unassimilated masses 
will not and cannot be spread proportionately throughout 
the native population. The critical point of assimilation 
as a national problem relates to these areas of alien 
congestion. 

Again, as never before In America, the " ascensional 
energy of the individual " finds a check in a stratified so- 
Stratification of cial system of increasing rigidity. If Danish 
Society Hilda had immigrated to the prairies of 

North Dakota she would have sung in the choir of the 



TEMPERING THE BODY TOGETHER 

little white church with the son of an Iowa farmer, and 
their children would have gone to the Agricultural College 
and perhaps to Congress. Stopping in the suburbs of 
New York City, she must marry the iceman or the green- 
grocer. Everywhere throughout our older society the in- 
dividual is forced back upon his own class, which only by 
the combined efforts of its stragglers can hope for great 
advancement. Hence our day has seen a great strengthen- 
ing of these struggling groups within the nation. By his 
vocation, and often by his race, the newcomer is predes- 
tined to join one or another of them. He finds no easy 
opportunity to obtain the knowledge and sympathy which 
overcome artificial and even instinctive barriers and release 
in men their essential like-mindedness. Only in the South, 
to be sure, is the system of social caste professed and dog- 
matically defended, but it is actually in force almost every- 
where in the Union and is the greatest and most deadly 
foe to the assimilation of the alien groups. Increasingly, 
therefore, it Is the part of patriotism and statesmanship 
to endeavor to maintain the ideal of national unity on 
democratic terms and consciously to direct the assimilat- 
ing forces. It is more complicated than it was yesterday ; 
a vaster and more urgent contribution to national destiny, 
and a mightier challenge to the intelligence and energy of 
all good men. It is the new struggle for the Union. 

Beyond all physical and social difl5culties, present-day 
democracy Involves a moral difficulty of its own creating. 
We are asking ourselves to go further and 
do more than our fathers tried ; namely, to 
carry democracy into detail and to extend it Hterally to 
all sorts and conditions of men. There Is a rising standard 
and an enlarged definition of the American Ideal. It 
means more to us, In our complex civilization must mean 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

more varied and difficult adjustments of men, than Jeffer- 
son dreamed. And we have solemnly undertaken to solve 
the race problem on democratic terms — a task self-im- 
posed by conscience and a sharpened sense of equity, and 
broader than any the former generations knew. 

IV. THE RACE PROBLEM 

The praise which has been lavished on the assimilative 
vigor of the American stock and on the triumph of their 
The Crux of democratic institutions is justified only when 
Democracy one ignores the exceptional group — roughly, 
one-eighth of our mainland population. In spite of the 
odds above enumerated, we might look forward to the tri- 
umph of the American spirit over the social comphcations 
of the age except for the difficulty which lurks always in 
the background — the race problem. This cuts the nerve 
of our efforts for the most needy. It is the crux of 
democracy. 

From the standpoint of the nation's duty of fitting its 
people for citizenship, the race problem is, as Prof. A. B. 
"The Anglo- Hart has called it, the Anglo-Saxon problem. 
Saxon Its root is a wavering faith in democracy 

Problem" which makes us fail to use to the full our 

Americanizing vigor. If the inner transformation of all 
people of alien spirit could be undertaken by us in perfect 
equity and benevolence, and with the equal application of 
our ample resources, the result would show, of course, 
various degrees of resistance on the part of the unassimi- 
lated groups. Different capacities for speedy and perfect 
participation in our life would be revealed. This is the 
objective natural difficulty in the making over of those 
who are at present unfit for democracy. It must be fully 

[28] 




Tenants on School Farm 
Brick School, Enfield, N. C. 




Caiinf-gik Buiidinc;, Fessenden Acadeaiv, Fla. 
Built entirely by negro labor 



TEMPERING THE BODY TOGETHER 

and frankly recognized and adequately measured before 
we close the case. 

But such a statement of the case bears no resemblance 
to our actual problem. What we actually find and must 
reckon with is the deep-seated disposition to give up in 
advance, and on theoretical grounds, with respect to 
certain peoples called the " lower races." The common 
thought is that some peoples are only belated in the process 
of civilization, and could easily catch up under proper 
stimulus. The mountain people of the Southern Appala- 
chian are ascribed to this class. Other peoples are sup- 
posed to be essentially inferior — as all the off-color races 
— and most of all, the negro. 

To be sure, popular judgment in the matter does not 
at all draw the line where the scientific judgment is thought 
Popular vs ^^ draw it. The supposed scientist is likely 

"Scientific" to say that the distinction between superior 
Judgment g^^^^ inferior races is, at the bottom, that be- 

tween the temperate and tropical zones. This makes the 
Chinaman and the American Indian belong to the superior 
races ; but the trade-unionist of the Pacific coast and the 
Western ranchmen do not think so. In the Northern cities 
the negro indiscriminately occupies the same tenement as 
the recent emigrant from southern Europe, and " dago " 
and *' nigger " tend to become interchangeable terms. 
Finally, although by his proportionate influence on his- 
tory the Jew is the greatest of the human stocks, in Amer- 
ican practise he is widely shut out from some of the 
privileges of other citizens. The point is that we have 
everywhere to deal with the spirit which draws a line 
against a greater or smaller part of our population and 
treats it as incapable of full Americanization under demo- 
cratic ideals. 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

Now it is to be always insisted that our problem is not 

that of the natural equality of men, but of their success- 

T^ ful preparation for participation in the com- 

Democracy . ^ ^•l^ ^i ^ 

does not de- Tnon national liie. There has been some ac- 

pend on tual practise of democracy in the world — - 

'^^^ ^ less than we have sometimes thought, but still 

some successful association of men under self-government 
and with the will to equalize opportunity. Democracy 
has existed ; equality never ; therefore democracy does not 
depend on equality. Its success has not been based on the 
natural equipment of its members, but rather on their 
domination by common ideals. It is the vigor and health 
of spiritual forces of social control which makes democ- 
racy possible. " By one Spirit are we all baptized into one 
body." 

Again, it is clearly and positively to be stated that amal- 
gamation of blood through intermarriage is not the neces- 
sary or desirable method of initiating and hastening the 
assimilation, at least of the more divergent stocks. The 
marrying of the white and negro in the South, for exam- 
ple, as a means of solving the race problem, is not seri- 
ously contemplated by anybody. 

But this plain and explicit denial must in candor be ac- 
companied by the denial also of that negative dogmatism 
Valid Objec- which forbids amalgamation on the ground 
tions to Amal- of an alleged natural barrier between the 
^ma ion, ^ races. It is absolutely not proven that na- 
chical, not ture interposes or intends to interpose any 

Physical physical or mental barrier. All supposed 

facts to the contrary miss the mark because conditions 
have never allowed a fair trial of the case. The half-breed 
has everywhere been the half-caste. His status and fate 
have been those of the underfed, the ill-housed, the socially 



TEMPERING THE BODY TOGETHER 

unprivileged. His lack of a controlling and saving social 

tradition, and the conflicting impulses of his two worlds, 

have subjected him to mental overstrain. But his problem 

is social and psychological, not physical. No one knows 

whether under equal opportunity the half-breed would 

show less fecundity, less forcefulness, less physical stamina 

and moral balance than the basal stocks. The laboratory 

of civilization has not yet tried that experiment. No state 

has ever been great enough to do social justice to those 

human mixtures which are banned by race prejudice, or 

to care to find out their actual capacity. 

None the less and partly for this reason amalgamation 

as a solvent of the race problem is definitely to be rejected 

. , ^. as tending to confusion and aggravating the 
Amalgamation . ,.„,! t- -i -i 

a Mistaken Solu- ongnial difficulty, it is a mistaken social 

tion; and method, the possible profitable employment 

Unnecessary ^^ ^j^j^j^ -^ ^^^^ ^^^^^.^ -^ beyond the hori- 
zon of our practical choices. And it is not necessary. All 
the present European nations are indeed the products of 
amalgamation, but an amalgamation which " occurred at 
a time so remote that it has been ascribed to the Stone 
Age. The later inroads have either been but temporary 
and have left but slight impression, or they have resulted 
in a division of territory. Thus the conquest of Britain 
by the Teutons and the Normans has not produced amal- 
gamation so much as it has caused a segregation of the 
Celts in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, and of the Teutons, 
with their later but slight infusion of Normans, in Eng- 
land. On the continent of Europe this segregation has 
been even more strongly marked." ^ Now racial distinc- 
tiveness has not kept the Scotch and Welsh from full and 
loyal partnership in British nationality ; and Ireland's 
* Commons, Races and Immigrants in America, p. 17. 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

estrangement is due to flagrant social injustice based on 
race prejudice. There are plenty of analogies, then, to 
show that it is possible to include diverse races in the es- 
sential spiritual unity of the nation without the mingling 
of blood, and also plenty of warnings against the fatefully 
inevitable schisms and irrepressible conflicts which come 
when an included population of distinct race is denied 
equal opportunity in the nation. 

Our actual business is assimilation. It is to make learn- 
ers of all in the nation, teaching its members to observe 

T . .^ . . all things which are characteristic of Ameri- 

Limits of As- ° . , . 

similation to be cans. For " it is not physical amalgamation 
discovered that unites mankind; it is mental commu- 

II y y ria^ nity. To be great, a nation need not be of 
one blood ; it must be of one mind. Racial inequality and 
inferiority are fundamental only to the extent that they 
prevent mental and moral assimilation." ^ Now no human 
mind can tell in advance of the event whether and to what 
extent mental and moral assimilation is impossible. To 
find out by actual trial is the nation's central task. 

V. THE UNDERLYING STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY 

In the problem of assimilating the various groups of 
incomplete Americans we touch an acute phase of the pro- 
foundest of human issues — the struggle for and against 
democracy. " In this warfare there is no discharge." 

With the growth of wealth and luxury there are daily 

more people who do not anticipate nor desire the assimila- 

Fundamental ^^^^ ^^ alien groups into the national life on 

Democracy in democratic terms. Many will thoughtlessly 

Danger deny this, some will deliberately resist the 

charge, yet the fact remains : the democracy in which 

' Commons, Races and Immigrants in America, p. 20. 
_ 



TEMPERING THE BODY TOGETHER 

we believe is rather a democracy of the descendants of the 
races of the temperate zone or of northern Europeans or 
of long-headed blondes — not the democracy of all Amer- 
icans. This is positively not a sectional phenomenon. Its 
most outspoken profession is in the South, but its preva- 
lent spirit is national. 

We are not without explicit exhortations as well as 
subtle temptations to choose the easier task of tempering 
The Tempta- the diverse American groups together on a 
tion to adjust non-democratic basis. Mr. Alfred Holt 
Groups within ^^ i f^j. example, recently warned and 
the Nation on ' i i i • i • 

a Non-demo- urged the assembled sociologists of the na- 

cratic Basis tion that the alleged lower races should be 
taught by precept, law, and social convention to accept 
a permanent caste status ; that they should be left uncor- 
rupted by the American spirit, content in the unalterable 
lot of the peasant. He thinks that the alternative is a 
devastating race war, the responsibility for which will be 
theirs who have taught the masses to aspire and to 
struggle. On the other hand, we have recently had many 
a persuasive setting forth of the beauty of the social sys- 
tem of the old South. Looking at it as it seems to those 
who hold it in memories mellowed and softened by time, it 
strongly appeals to those of us who are daily irritated by 
the struggle with household servants, or nagged into mean- 
ness by endless labor controversies. How natural the 
thought, " If we could only have a recognized servile class 
which knew and kept its place all would be peace " ! Com- 
pared with this pleasing vision how stubborn the reality to 
which actual conditions destine us ! How aggravating the 
incomplete American as neighbor or employee ; how " up- 
pity ! " the new negro ; how socially difficult any man who 
' Studies in the American Race Problem, ch. vi. 
3 [sT] 



CHRISTIAN EECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

stumbles upward, but half appreciating the inner standards 
and sense of fitness of a more favored group ! What lack 
of gratitude, what frequent contempt, repays him who 
would help ! Against such difficulties shall we not cease to 
strive ? 

Well, democracy as a social policy is not likely long to 
continue unless reenforced by some profounder sanction. 
Democracy "a " ^^ ^^ ^ ^^^^ "^ rehgion," says Professor 
Sort of Reii- James, " and we are bound not to admit its 
S^o^ failure." Specifically it is an expression of 

the characteristic Christian passion for " the more feeble, 
the less honorable, the unlovely." " God tempered the 
body together, giving more abundant honor to the part 
which lacked." The defense of this paradox is possible 
only on religious grounds, and intelligible only to those 
for whom these grounds are good. To be sure the political 
and economic tendencies of the present age have given 
vast opportunity to the democratic spirit. Many under 
favorable conditions are capable of accepting it imita- 
tively. But its continued mastery of men depends upon 
its power to reproduce the inner certainty and incorrupt- 
ible zeal of an original spiritual insight. 

Old Aunt Dinah died the other day down in Alabama. 
She was a delightful example of the old-fashioned negro 
type, numbers of which have survived in connection with 
almost all the older schools of the American Missionary 
Association in the South. They transferred the affection 
which they had for their former masters, unblemished and 
undiminished, and lavished it upon those who now stood 
to them for power and kindliness. They never compre- 
hended what was sought in the freeing of their race. For 
themselves they passionately repudiated any act or senti- 
ment which disturbed their inbred sense of inferiority. 

[m] 



TEMPERING THE BODY TOGETHER 

They wanted only to serve, to cling, to fulfil life on the 
level of subjection to some white master. Few fulfil so 
appropriately the role which they inwardly accept. It 
is difficult for the mind without an innate democratic pas- 
sion to see that all this is after all less beautiful than the 
too frequent representative of the new order — obnoxious 
in dress, in voice, in manners, an unsatisfactory worker 
and still less satisfactory enjoyer of the means of life, 
an irresponsible member of the state and a potential men- 
ace to it. Yet the most perfect slave is lower than the 
most imperfect freeman. However admirable the choice 
fruit of the old order, " he that is least in the new king- 
dom is greater than he." 

May one count on the ratification of this judgment by 
men as the years fulfil their present tendencies and bring 
forth their certain surprises.'' We do believe so, and will 
risk the outcome. The inner springs of democracy may 
be trusted. There will not fail a line of men who have 
seen the vision of human brotherhood and who will storm 
the universe to make the vision good. 

"Speak it boldly, 'These are Gods,' 
All besides are ghosts." 

VI. COMPETENCY OF MISSIONARY JUDGMENT ON 
NATIONAL PROBLEMS 

It is the fashion to discount the testimony of the man 

on the hilltop in favor of that of the man on the ground. 

,p, ,j In judging the prospects of our unassimi- 

the Ground vs. lated American groups the near view is pre- 

the Man on ferred to the far view. " Their neighbors 
the Hilltop ^^^^^ ^j^g^ ^^^^„ jg ^j^g ^j,^ rpj^g ^^^g^ 

understands the Chinaman ; the Plains the Indian ; the 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

South the negro. Especially in the latter case is there 
passionate insistence that the " outsider " keep his hands 
off and leave practical adjustments to the immediately re- 
sponsible parties. Especially if the outsider be pohtician 
— or missionary ! I do not doubt that the South has 
suffered at times from both. 

It happens, therefore, that testimony proceeding from 
missionary sources, this book for example, has to 
™, . meet a certain presumption of unreliability, 

against Mis- The missionary, it is first alleged, is not in 
sionary Com- contact with a full and representative range 
petency ^^ ^^^^^^ « rpj^^ trouble is that in the schools 

they see the best specimens of the race, at an impression- 
able period of their lives, and under abnormal condi- 
tions." ^ Their good showing is possible because they 
" work only with stringently sifted material." ^ They do 
not touch the masses. 

Again, the missionary is a sentimentalist. No more 
damning charge, it is assumed, can be laid against any 
man in this practical and scientific age. 

In view of the first charge it will be illuminating to 
consider the range and character of the contacts which 
Extent and In- a representative missionary organization has 
timacy of Mis- with the materials of its problem. The Amer- 
lonary on ican Missionary Association has carried on 
Significant religious or educational work for the negro 

Facts at from two to three hundred points in twelve 

Southern states during a period of sixty years. During 
all this time it has touched the life of the race in all its 
phases and extremes. 

Its work at Fessenden Academy in central Florida, for 

* Kelsey, The Negro Farmer, p. 6. 

^ Tillinghast, The Negro in Africa and America, p. 214. 

[S6] 





2 t« 



w ^ 



O 



TEMPERING THE BODY TOGETHER 

example, began with a people nearer Africa than any 
other group of American negroes. In this semi-tropical 
The Ne»ro of climate, life was possible without stove or 
the Turpentine shoes. Cooking was done the year round in 
^^™P the open air. When at length capital came 

in to hew the forest, drain off the turpentine, and strip 
the phosphate beds, these lowest of negroes were the crude 
recruits who rushed blindly into the hardest of industrial 
fates — that of unskilled transient laborers, living in tem- 
porary camps and continually moving on as industry de- 
spoils one place after another. " North Carolina nigger " 
is a generic term for turpentine worker; and Principal 
Wiley of the Fessenden school finds out by statistical in- 
vestigation that a large proportion of such workers in 
his community are actually immigrants from the " old 
North state." This shows what the exploiting industries 
do for their workers. Migration becomes a habit. The 
material product is lumber and naval stores ; the human 
products irresponsible, homeless men, criminals, and 
vagrants. 

The typical camp consists of parallel rows of company 
houses, generally single-roomed, battened cabins, with tight 
shutters at the windows, and mud or brick fireplaces. 
Rarely they are whitewashed. A company commissary, 
aptly called " the grab " (where supplies are bought at 
upwards of thirty per cent above ordinary figures), and a 
turpentine-still complete the picture. 

Now, " single men in barricks don't grow into plaster 
saints," nor ebony either. Turpentine workers are mostly 
young. Vice is their amusement — drinking, gambling, 
lewdness. Women camp-followers cook and wash for and 
live with successive men. There are always exceptions — • 
decent men with families, who have caught the migratory 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

habit but try to protect their wives and children. They 
seek to rent Kttle cabins apart from the quarters. A few 
rise to be bosses or succeed financially by sub-letting tur- 
pentine rights, but wages are paid infrequently and often 
in checks on the company store, which contrives to keep 
the employee generally in debt. The " gentleman's agree- 
ment " between employers, and sometimes the rifle and 
bloodhound, keeps him from running away. It is not an 
attractive life. Yet the lure of it, its wandering and gre- 
garious irresponsibility, attracts many a boy from the 
farm. Thus the turpentine, lumber, and phosphate in- 
dustries are educational institutions. They teach succes- 
sive generations of illiterates to know nothing better. 

If these are exceptional negroes, the best specimens of 
their race, what is the average life? Yet, in spite of the 
fact that the saloon party enfranchised a thousand negroes 
in the county (by paying their poll-taxes), the influence 
of Fessenden Academy carried its precinct for no license 
in the late local option campaign ; and now and then even 
from the turpentine huts a boy or girl and sometimes a 
family is redeemed to better things. 

Recently there has been erected at Fessenden a modest 
Carnegie building. Not only was the gift secured by a 
Experience negro principal, but the building was de- 
with the Negro signed by a negro architect, whose pro- 
in Industry fessional training was had at a mission 

school, and erected entirely by negro labor at a cost of 
some $8000. The master builder acquired his trade under 
his slave-trained father, now a prosperous contractor 
in Alabama. Two industrial teachers — one trained at 
Hampton and one at Talledega — shared the direction 
of the work. The two other regular carpenters were 
products of the Brick School at Enfield, N. C. Their 

[3S] 



TEMPERING THE BODY TOGETHER 

work was supplemented by that of the Fessenden school- 
boys. The chief mason, a slave-trained artisan, was aided 
by a Baptist preacher and a nondescript who had "just 
picked up his trade." The mortar-maker was taught his 
job in the United States army. The plasterer, an Ohio 
negro and fine workman, regularly commanding $5 per 
day, stipulated that he be allowed two half-days per week 
to get drunk. His assistants had less ability but like 
habits. The painting contractor, the son of a free negro, 
and much above the average in ability and character, is 
one of the leading craftsmen in his line in a neighboring 
Florida city. He uses neither tobacco nor liquor, has a 
good education and genuine artistic gifts as a decorator. 
He employs at times as many as ten men, and his work on 
the Carnegie building was an excellent job. Indeed the 
building as a whole was the most satisfactory of some ten 
or a dozen built by the Association in various parts of the 
South during the same year, part under white contractors 
and a few with white labor exclusively. On most of the 
buildings white and negro laborers worked side by side at 
the same trades, making immediate comparison possible. 

The fortunes of the work were not all joyous. The 
principal complained that most of the men continually 
asked to draw pay faster than it was earned and added: 

Some of my other workmen that had not been trained 
would go off after pay-day, and the next thing I 
would hear was that they were in the lock-up at Ocala 
charged with drunken brawls or fighting. One was 
charged with gambling and had to flee. 

The trouble with some was that they did not keep 
their word. I would scour the country for a man, 
and get his promise, and the promise would not be 
kept. I had more trouble and quite as much disap- 

[39] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

pointment in digging the basement as the United 
States will have in digging the canal. 

Hot weather and hard work, even with good pay, 
did not mix. Of course we got the basement, but it 
was with the dis-operation of the ox, the nag, the boys, 
the physical labor, and planning of your servant, and, 
more than all, the power of God. 

This certainly does not prove that negro labor is fault- 
less ; it does prove that a missionary agency in its indus- 
Exnerience trial experience has opportunity to discover 

with the Negro the faults of its average representatives. The 
in Other Lines Association erects ten or a dozen buildings 
every year. Negro hands have built property for it worth 
millions of dollars. The Association knows the agri- 
cultural negro through a dozen school farms and some 
scores of tenants, whose successes and failures are matters 
of record ; and this experience happens to cover all the 
chief agricultural provinces of the South. It knows the 
negro in domestic service through the necessity of pro- 
viding three meals each day and beds every night for two 
and a half regiments of colored pupils. It has employed 
many more artisans, farmers, and cooks than it ever has 
teachers and preachers. It knows the negro upper classes 
too, the educated and select. Edgar Gardner Murphy 
shows that the South's chief ignorance of the race is at 
this point. ^ Representatives of the Association are ad- 
mitted into hearts and homes where only friends can enter. 
Thus through vital contacts at all significant parts of the 
race's life, in tAvelve states through forty years, it has been 
acquiring information. If it is ignorant, it is not because 
of aloofness from the heart of the problem. 

» Present South, p. 168. 

[lo] 



TEMPERING THE BODY TOGETHER 



On the contrary Mr. A. H. Stone, one of the most meri- 
torious and candid of recent Southern writers, illustrates 
the fact that the man on the ground may 
Critic uS^Orig- have his gaze fixed on his own feet. He ex- 
inal Muck- pends considerable sarcasm on the assump- 

^^^^ tion of a Northern radical editor that a man 

in New York may understand the negro better than a 
man in Mississippi. In many respects Mr. Stone's survey 
of negro conditions is very broad and illuminating, but 
no syllable in his voluminous book indicates that he at all 
recognizes the experience or attaches any weight to the 
testimony of another distinguished Mississippian, Major 
R. W. Millsaps. Mr. Stone's plantation experiment leaves 
him with a very poor impression of negro labor. Major 
Millsaps owns a plantation of five hundred acres within 
a few miles of Mr. Stone's. On it he has twenty negro 
families, including seventy-five people in all. With them 
he has tried the daring experiment of trusting tenants 
without an overseer. His own version of its results is 
thus reported by Mr. Baker: 

" Did it work? " I asked. 

" I have never lost one cent," said Major Millsaps ; 
" no negro has ever failed to pay up, and you 
could n't drive them off the place. When other farm- 
ers complain of shortage of labor and tenants, I never 
have had any trouble." 

Every negro on the place owns his own mules and 
wagons, and is out of debt. Nearly every family has 
bought or is buying a home in the little town of Le- 
land, near by, some of which are comfortably fur- 
nished. They are all prosperous and contented. 

" How do you do it? " I asked. 

" The secret," he said, " i s to treat the negro well 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

and give him a chance. I have found that a negro, 
hke a white man, is most responsive to good treat- 
ment. Even a dog responds to kindness ! The trouble 
is that most planters want to make too much money 
out of the negro ; they charge him too much rent ; 
they make too large profits on the supplies they fur- 
nish. I know merchants who expect a return of fifty 
per cent on supplies alone. The best negroes I have 
known are those who are educated. Negroes need more 
education of the right kind — not less — and it will 
repay us well if we give it to them. It makes better, 
not worse, workers.^ 

The contrast between Major Millsaps and Mr. Stone 
seems to suggest that the physical nearness of a fact does 
not guarantee its recognition. John Bunyan's original 
muck-raker was oblivious to the surrounding glory because 
his eyes were fixed upon the ground. 

The charge that the missionary is a sentimentalist 
jmpHes that there are different states of mind in which 
Need of the ^^ approach facts ; that different clues may 
Man with the be brought to their interpretation. Prox- 
^^"® imity is no guaranty of knowledge to liim 

who lacks the clue. 

Prof. G. N. Carver of the agricultural department 
of Tuskegee is one of the most competent graduates of 
a leading Northern agricultural college. In his profes- 
sional capacity he is often called upon to advise Southern 
planters as to the development of their farms. Recently 
on such a tour of inspection the Colonel said, " Well, Pro- 
fessor, what should we do with such soil.'' " Sifting a little 
of it through his thin, black fingers. Carver replied, " You 
ought n't to plow this farm ; you ought to can it ! This 

* Following the Color-Line, p. 103. 
[42] 



wm 




xn 





CQ 



TEMPERING THE BODY TOGETHER 

is mineral paint." Now the Southerner had been treading 
those clods for fifty years, yet he knew less about them 
than a negro found out in ten minutes. Fifty years more 
would n't have added wisdom. A glance sufficed the ex- 
pert, the man with the clue. 

Now there are experts in humanity. Of one such it was 
said, " He knew what was in man," Some have his clue 
and others lack it. Being geographically next to a human 
problem does not help the latter. Proximity ought to 
mean spiritual nearness. The missionary must indeed es- 
tablish his adequate contact with the facts, and can. The 
unbeliever's actual difficulty is with the missionary point 
of view. The issue essentially involves the competency of 
the Christian solution of human problems. In having his 
judgment challenged the servant merely shares the lot of 
his Master. 



43] 



II. THE SOUTH AS MISSIONARY 
GROUND 

I. SECTIONAL vs. NATIONAL PROBLEMS 

THE primary responsibility for any unassimilated 
group within the nation belongs to whatever old 
and established American population happens to 
The Conges- be its immediate neighbor. But this origi- 
tion of Incom- nal Americanism varies greatly in different 

pee men- sections, both as to its material and insti- 

cans in the , ' 

Least Favored tutional resources for assimilation and in 

Sections mental attitude toward the whole problem. 

In fact the greatest masses of incomplete Americans are 

congested in those sections of the nation wliich in these 

respects are least favored. 

The first question of practical policy must be, Can the 
geographical neighbors of an un-Americanized group 
reasonably assimilate it.? Have they enough civilizing 
leaven within them to leaven the lump.'' Will the national 
need be equally and adequately met if each section builds 
" over against its own house " ? The answer is emphatic- 
ally, No. Because of vastly unequal local resources the 
Americanizing of each unassimilated group is a national 
problem, and all sections are missionary ground. 

The East and North, where the new immigration is 
chiefly located, have largely succeeded, so far as education 
is concerned, and the children of the aliens congested in 
cities there are better provided with school facilities than 
the children of Americans throughout the country at large. 
Less than one per cent of their children, from ten to four- 

[44] 



THE SOUTH AS MISSIONARY GROUND 

teen years of age, are illiterate, while the proportion of 
such illiterates of native parentage is over four per cent. 
Th F t d ^^^ ^^^^ urban success is largely counter- 
North as Mis- balanced by the rural failure. Away from 
sionary the forcing process of city life the clan spirit 

of the newcomer yields slowly, and the substi- 
tution of foreign stock for American country popu- 
lation makes the maintenance of New England's rural 
institutions increasingly dependent upon money and leader- 
ship from more favored communities. Deserted farms and 
decaying churches create an acute problem. The burden 
of domestic missionary agencies is double that of fifty 
years ago. Two at least of the great Christian bodies 
have recently established national agencies to meet the 
problem of immigration, chiefly congested in this section. 
As never before the nation must help the East and North. 

The rural West with its thin population owes the vigor 
and tone of its civilization largely to the frontier mis- 
The West as sionary and college builder, supported by re- 
Missionary hgious and educational Boards drawing their 
Ground funds from the East. Even if they had not 
regarded the Indian as an enemy, the struggling pioneer 
population could not have done for him what the paternal- 
ism of the government and the zeal of the evangelist have 
rather blunderingly done. The Oriental immigrant bears 
an almost negligible proportion to the population of the 
Pacific coast, yet money is every year sent from other 
sections to teach him to read the primer and the Bible. 
By these tokens the West is missionary ground. 

In the South, however, is massed the greatest number 

of incomplete Americans, with the fewest resources for 

making them fully fit for citizenship. In the geography 

of assimilation this is the unfavored section. It is im- 

_ 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

possible to make a statistical statement as to the backward 
whites of the South, but there were more illiterate white 
Proportionate children there in 1900 than the total num- 
Magnitudeof j^gj. ^f reservation Indians and of Orientals 
pendence on ^^ ^^^ United States. Add the fact of more 
the Nation illiterate negroes than there were when 

the Emancipation Proclamation was penned! This meas- 
ures the proportionate magnitude of sectional dependence 
upon the nation. 



II. THE SOUTH AS MISSIONARY GROUND 

The main current of American civilization is based on 
the assumption that a common school education is the 
irreducible minimum of preparation for worthy citizen- 
ship. The South cannot adequately furnish even this to 
vast masses of her people. 

The twelve proud Southern states are in a distinct class 
with New Mexico, Arizona, and what was Indian Terri- 
S til Tll't- ^o^J' ^^ ^^^ bottom of the illiteracy list, and 
eracyand they would still be there if there were no 

Educational negro this side of Africa. Their native white 
ac war ness iHi^^ej-acy at the last census ranged from 
8^/10 per cent to I8V10 per cent, being greatest in North 
Carolina, where every sixth white child is illiterate. The 
average was 11 per cent. Negro illiteracy in the sixteen 
former slave states stood at 27 per cent in Missouri, then 
increased from 41 per cent in Arkansas to 61 per cent in 
Louisiana, or 51 per cent on the average. In the best 
state of the South thirteen men out of every one hundred 
cannot write their own names ; in the worst state, thirty- 
eight. This is distinctly a sectional phenomenon ; it marks 

the South off from the rest of the nation, and indeed from 

_ 



THE SOUTH AS MISSIONARY GROUND 

all the more enlightened portions of Christendom.^ The 
Southern child goes to school but a fraction over one-half 
as many days per year as the Northern child. There is 
no compulsory educational system except in Kentucky.^ 
The enrolment is only 64 per cent of the school population 
(nearly 10 per cent less than in the North), and that 
part attends 10 per cent less regularly than school chil- 
dren do in the more advanced section. Male teachers 
get an average monthly salary of $16 less than in the 
North and female teachers $9 less ; but the salary is 
not so much behind as the Southern teachers' prepara- 
tion. The number of college or normal graduates 
among them is painfully small. Eighty per cent have 
had only a common-school education. They do their 
work with one dollar's worth of buildings and equipment 
where their Northern brethren have eight. Tliis means 
overcrowded quarters, consequently relatively poor 
teaching. 

The North spends $254,000,000 annually for schools 
as against the South's $39,000,000 ; or $17.65 per pupil 
against the South's $4.54 per pupil ; or $4.65 per inhab- 
itant against the South's $1,59. The extremes are Mas- 
sachusetts spending $26.42 per pupil and Alabama but 
$2,39 ; yet the latter state, of its poverty, has sometimes 
devoted to education one-half of its total revenue. No 
one claims that the Massachusetts product is better in 
proportion to the money spent upon it. Yet the difference 
is not wholly due to the relative wealth of the sections, 
for, taking their general average, the South spends for 

* The statistical comparisons of this chapter are chiefly based on the 
Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1906. 

^ A few cities elsewhere have compulsory education under special "local 
option " legislation. 

[47] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

education twenty cents on every $100 of taxable property ; 
the North twenty-six cents.^ 

Two generations ago a Scotch family separated itself 
from the parent clan on the Cumberland Plateau in Ten- 
rp. rp nessee and its children colonized in several 

Child vs. his Northern states, including Iowa. This state 
Iowa Cousin j^^s a population slightly larger than Ten- 
nessee and of about the same relative density, but has 
somewhat fewer children, the Southern mountain stock 
being notoriously prolific. It is interesting to compare the 
lot of the cousins who grew up in Iowa with those who 
remained in the Tennessee cabins. Ten per cent more 
children of school age attend school in Iowa than in Ten- 
nessee. Teachers number 29,650 in Iowa to 9189 in 
Tennessee; schoolhouses number 13,947 against 7354. 
Teachers' salaries average nearly one-third more in Iowa, 
which expends $10,898,030 for education against $1,751,- 
047 spent by Tennessee; this being $4.49 per inhabitant 
and $16.43 for each child of school age in Iowa against 
$1.49 per inhabitant and $4.52 per child of school age in 
Tennessee. In other words, Iowa's child has over three 
times as many teachers, and more than three times as 
much money spent on him as his Tennessee cousin. He 
always has two seats in school to the other's one ; he goes 
to school more than twice as many days each year, and 
his state gives him double the training to fit him for citi- 
zenship which the other receives — and all this because • 
of the accident of his birth north rather than south of 
Mason and Dixon's line. Yet Tennessee is by no means 
the least progressive state in the South. 

* See Coon, Twenty-five Years' Progress of Public Education in North 
Carolina: A Comparative Statistical Study of School Maintenance in the 
South, etc. National Educational Association, Report of Committee on 
Taxation, 1905. 

[48] 



THE SOUTH AS MISSIONARY GROUND 

These facts are indisputable, but it is delicate business 
to say why they exist. The most thorough diagnosis is 
that of a Southerner, Professor Rose, of the University of 
Tennessee.-^ He enumerates five reasons for the South's 
educational backwardness. Each of these reasons merits 
our comment. 

1. An aristocratic tradition unfavorable to popu- 
lar education. 

2. Poverty. 

3. Excessive individualism which sets narrow limits 
to public activity. 

4. A scattered rural population. 

5. The fact of the two races necessitating a double 
school system. 

We noted above that the North has been successful in 
educating the foreigner because he lives chiefly in the 
The South cities with their magnificent school systems. 

Five-sixths Massachusetts alone had in 1900 forty-seven 

^^^^ cities with above 10,000 inhabitants, their 

combined population being 2,050,862. The nine seaboard 
states of the South had only forty-nine such cities, with 
a population of but 1,525,564. Five-sixths of the Southern 
population is widely scattered over mountain and plain, 
through swamp and forest. Such a sparse population is 
difficult to gather into schools. This makes the physical 
problem of education serious, and helps to explain the 
low standing of the section. 

Again, the South is poor. Its chief resource is agricul- 
ture, and its most natural comparison is 
with the agricultural portion of the North, 
namely, the North Central states. These have a wealth 

* Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1903, vol. i, pp. 359 ff. 

4 [49] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

in agricultural land and buildings of nine and a half bil- 
lion dollars. The South Central states, of about equal 
area, have a similar wealth of but two billion dollars. Iowa 
alone, with an area and population about those of Ten- 
nessee, has farm values of over two billions, or more than 
that of all the South Central states. All this is graphically 
revealed on maps in the Special Report of the Census Of- 
fice on Wealth, Debt, and Taxation. These show that no 
Southern state has relatively as much taxable real estate 
as the poorest Northern state, and that the taxable real 
estate per family is two and a half times as large in the 
North as in the South. Only rarely do taxable values in 
the South exceed $300 per acre ; while in the North they 
fall below this only here and there. 

The scientific study of national resources by our gov- 
ernment has revealed almost unimaginable theoretical pos- 
TheSoiith's sibilities of increased production of wealth 
Amazing Nat- in the South, as in every other part of the 
ural Resources continent. Inflamed by this vision and daz- 
zled by the marvelous absolute gains of their section in 
almost every line, recent Southern champions have talked 
as though the handicap of sectional poverty would be 
quickly overcome, and the South furnished equally with 
Americanizing forces, at least with respect to its white 
population. As President Alderman puts it, their jubi- 
lation of spirit at this prospect " verges on something 
like hilarity." 

Now no one who has traveled the South so as to know 
its land and people intimately can doubt that many of 
Will the South ^^^^^e dreams will come true along with many 
overtake the others yet undreamed. Other sections have 
North? their dreams of wealth. Probably under sci- 

entific objective measurement the South as a wealth pro- 

[50] 



THE SOUTH AS MISSIONARY GROUND 

ducing section would be discovered to be decidedly inferior 
in possibilities to an equal area of the great upper Missis- 
sippi plains. Materials for such an accurate comparison 
do not yet exist, and if they did they would be beside the 
point ; for the effective wealth of any land depends upon 
the use which is made of it. We have to consider, therefore, 
whether, on other grounds, it is likely that the relative 
gap between the progress of the sections will soon be 
closed and the South cease to be missionary ground. Of 
course if the hare lies down to sleep the tortoise will over- 
take and pass him ; but is the hare going to sleep ? 

The slightest reflection shows that proportionate gains 
of a section which is just beginning development along 
RateofEduca- new lines cannot keep up. It is easy to im- 
tional Progress prove on little or nothing. The educational 
progress of the South looms up impressively on the back- 
ground of its previous lack. The same progress elsewhere 
would almost be taken for granted. Nor are the propor- 
tionate gains all on the side of the South. It is not in- 
creasing the number of its teachers in proportion to school 
population as fast as the North is.^ Now effective teach- 
ing means individual teaching. The crying evil of the 
Southern schools is that they are overcrowded ; there are 
too many pupils for each teacher. Consequently they do 
not progress in quahty as fast as in numbers. Again, the 
common school was long ago pretty completely established 
in the North. This section already had universal ele- 
mentary schools and could not possibly show great pro- 
portionate gains in that direction. The high school, on 
the contrary, as the " people's university " has almost 
limitless possibilities of development before it throughout 
the nation, but the proportion of high school enrolment 
' Report of Commissioner of Education, 1906, vol. ii, p. 696. 

[5l] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

is increasing faster in the North than in the South.* 
Also there is a larger proportion of boys in the Northern 
high. School, and a smaller proportion of its pupils are 
preparing for college. These are indications of a more 
democratic character of the secondary public education 
in the North. It is not only developing faster, but in a 
more promising direction. 

Turning now to the probable increase of wealth — 
which, is the ultimate guaranty of education — we find 
Probable In- that the farm values of the United States, 
crease of according to the estimate of the Department 

Wealth of Agriculture, increased in the five years 

from 1900 to 1905 over six billions of dollars. Considerably 
over half of this gain was to the credit of the North Cen- 
tral states, with an average gain in value of $11.25 per 
acre. About one-fifth of the increased value was in the 
South Central states, with an average increase of $4<.66 
per acre. Values in the South Atlantic and Western states 
increased about equally. The increase is explained as fol- 
lows ; " Subj ect to some qualifications the general principle 
is that the land itself has become more highly capitalized 
by a larger amount of net profit per acre." ^ 

Now net profit per acre does not depend upon the theo- 
retical fertility of the soil, but upon population, markets, 

c ., . . transportation, and ag-riculture. In its efforts 
southern Agri- . 

culture caught to help the South realize the best from its 
in a Vicious resources, the agents of the government re- 
peatedly find and record two great difficul- 
ties — first, the character of the people ; second, the so- 
cial system under which they live. Reports in the Year 

» Report of Commissioner of Education, 1902, p. 1651. Cf. Ibid., 1906, 
p. 507. 

'^ Year Book, Department of Agriculture, 1905, p. 512. 

[52] 



THE SOUTH AS MISSIONARY GROUND 



Book of the Department of Agriculture for 1905, while 
recording much progress, complain that the farmers of 
the South are conservative and the available agricultural 
labor not intelhgent enough to use improved methods of 
agriculture. The conclusion is, " In order to make any 
radical change in the type of farming which prevails over 
most of the cotton growing section, it is necessary to train 
the available labor in new channels and to give it a sense 
of responsibility not heretofore necessary." ^ This does 
not refer solely to negro labor, for the reporter for Arkan- 
sas and Louisiana writes, "White labor is very scarce 
and much of it is looked on as inferior to negro labor." ^ 
Moreover most of the Southern farmers, white or black, 
are slaves to the credit system, which is based on cotton 
as the traditional " money crop " in the South. Only by 
agreeing to put a specified number of acres into cotton 
can a tenant get his " rashuns " advanced while his crop 
is growing ; accordingly he could not diversify his produce 
if he would. Southern agriculture is thus caught in a 
vicious circle. To get out at all it must educate its people 
to better methods, but the money necessary to pay for 
that education cannot be had till the net profit per acre 
in the South is greatly increased, nor can the gap between 
the Americanizing forces of North and South be bridged 
till this profit increases very much faster in the South than 
in the North. Of this there is no immediate prospect. 

Praises of the " South of to-morrow " invariably read : 
When all our land is brought into cultivation and our 
"The South of agriculture rationalized; when immigration 
To-morrow" has increased our numbers and given us a 
new laboring population ; when the engineer has done his 

> Year Book, Department of Agriculture, 1905, p. 194. 

2 Ibid., p. 211. ___^ 

""" 753] " 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

work for our forest and swamp, and when the prejudice 
which now prevents most of the civihzed world from re- 
garding the South as a desirable home is overcome, we 
shall be able to take care of our own problems. But how 
soon are these things likely to happen? The government 
expert sees that there are many handicaps to the speedy 
change of the Southern agricultural system. The Charles- 
ton News and Courier just now confesses, " There appears 
to be no present prospect of direct immigration to South 
Carolina or to any of the other Southern states." The 
Italian government has recently diverted all its immigra- 
tion from the state of Mississippi to save them from what 
looks to it like peonage. Of the need of an Appalachian 
forest reserve, Professor Brigham wrote in 1903: 

More than $10,000,000 was .the sum of flood losses 
in the Appalachian states during the year 1901. 
With the abundant rains, wherever a slope of any 
steepness is cleared, it is cropped but for a few years, 
the soil is washed into the streams, tillage is given up, 
and the field is abandoned to ever-deepening gullies. 
Meantime the rich bottom lands below are either exca- 
vated and removed bodily by the torrents, or they are 
deluged with five, eight, or ten feet of stony waste, 
and become as useless as a gravelly river-bed. Ten 
years of delay would be fatal. The single states can- 
not do the work.^ 

Now five of these years of grace have gone by and The 
World's Work says, " The problem is to save one of the 
most valuable and attractive parts of the nation — liter- 
ally to save it; for it is going to waste with a rapidity 
which is fairly astounding." ^ That the South will catch 

* Geographical Influences in American History, p. 285. 
« The World's Work, vol. xvi, p. 10300. 



THE SOUTH AS MISSIONARY GROUND 

up is possibly one of the may-bes, but it is certainly still 
one of the not-yets. 

Every other Southern handicap pales before the fact 
that a third of its population are negroes but forty years 
The Burden of out of slavery and one-half of them illiterate, 
the Negro There are some eight millions of them, in- 

creasing from ISVio per cent of the population of Ken- 
tucky to 58^10 per cent in Mississippi ; they constitute 
a majority also in South Carolina. Though declining in 
numbers relative to the general population of the section 
they increased more rapidly in the last decade than did 
the whiteis in six Southern states. Their poverty does 
not permit them to bear a proportionate share of the bur- 
dens of taxation, and from the standpoint of the South 
their race must have separate educational and charitable 
institutions. It would be neither safe nor just to leave 
to so handicapped a section so massive a national problem. 

Excessive individualism and the aristocratic tradition 
unfavorable to general education remain, but are waning 
TheSouth's factors in the South's attitude; especially 
Half Loaf Un- they are no longer politically dominant. The 
evenly Divided achievement of her people in popularizing 
their institutions fairly merits President Alderman's words : 
" They have developed an overwhelming public sentiment, 
with the social and political agencies necessary to sustain 
that sentiment, in favor of the education of all the people 
at public expense, thus making a social system, semifeudal 
in nature, a democracy in social usage, as well as in 
political philosophy." ^ This is fully true as far as the 
white population is concerned. It is not true as relates 
to the black third of the South's children. Judged by 
deeds the prevailing sentiment favors giving them an in- 
1 The World's Work, "The Growing South," vol. xvl p. 10375. 

[55] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

ferior and class type of education, unequally supported 
by public resources. Only $2.21 is spent on the negro 
child to $4.92 for the white, while the most catholic minds 
of the South are definitely committed to the prior claim of 
the belated white. The cry is, " Let the children first be 
fed." " The lot of the Piedmont and Appalachian white 
man has been forgetfulness and neglect. The world might 
as well understand that the Southerner is done with this 
neglect forever. He sees that the redemption of his com- 
munity lies primarily in the restoration and development 
of the white population." ^ Now with the South's present 
and probable resources the broadest and heartiest democ- 
racy could not adequately supply the needs of all its 
people. The lack of such democracy means the uneven 
distribution of the half loaf, which is all the South has. 
The plain confession of this situation is the final demon- 
stration that the South is missionary ground. 

III. THE DIVISION OF LABOR BETWEEN 
ASSIMILATING FORCES 

To insist that the congestion of unassimilated popula- 
tion in that section makes the Americanizing of the South 
a national problem is not to deny that the big end of the 
work belongs to the South. In the division of labor be- 
tween cooperating forces. Southern agencies and resources 
have the greater burden and glory. To the very limit of 
his strength and will, the belated white man and the negro 
are each the Southerner's problem. 

To be specific, there are five cooperating agencies trying 
to Americanize the South — three of which are Southern. 

' The World's Work, " The Growing South," vol. xvi, p. 10378. 
[56] 



THE SOUTH AS MISSIONARY GROUND 

Primarily the responsibility rests with the state as the 
agency of democratic society ; and no amount of philan- 
Cooneratine thropy from any source can undo the wrong 
Agencies: The of the state's failure in full and equal jus- 
S*^*® tice to its citizens. In judging the success 

or failure of the Southern states one must avoid two errors. 
Much fulsome praise has been lavished on them for be- 
latedly undertaking what in the eyes of civilization is the 
plain and self-evident duty of the state, namely, the ele- 
mentary education of all its citizens. But equally one 
must not fail to appreciate the grave handicap against 
which the Southern people have struggled even so far. 
They have " had the political patience and equipoise not 
to disturb the only good thing decreed to them by a carpet- 
bag government, namely, the provision for popular educa- 
tion placed in their organic law." Out of this they have 
developed a general school system " fairly complete as to 
its machinery and methods." They are now spending 
forty-five per cent of all their public revenue upon educa- 
tion; fifty-one per cent of negro children (a trifle more 
than one-half!) and sixty-seven per cent of white children 
are in school ; and this without state compulsion. Twenty 
per cent of all educational spending goes to the negro. 
This is not equitable, for he comprises thirty-two per cent 
of the school population. Yet every attempt to limit the 
support of the negro school to what the negro himself 
pays in direct taxation has been defeated, and the South 
stands theoretically committed to elementary education 
for all its people. 

And all this is far less significant than the fact that a 
TheEduca- new spirit has possessed the Southern people, 
tional Revival The building of their schools has had the 
character of a popular crusade, and constitutes one 

[5r\ 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTEUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

of the most notable idealistic movements of the day. No- 
where else in the Union have recent public campaigns been 
waged and governors elected on educational issues. No- 
where has the vital connection so quickly been grasped 
between education and the deeper problems of social re- 
form. In brief, educational enthusiasm and consecration 
is the South's peculiar response to that social spirit which 
is the most vital and creative movement of our time. There 
have been no greater heroes in American history than the 
little handful of educational zealots of Southern birth 
who fought their section single-handed to perpetuate the 
carpetbagger's common school. There has been no edu- 
cational philanthropy half so praiseworthy as the Southern 
taxpayer's at its best. The whole movement merits the 
most exalted eulogy. 

"For that the leaders took the lead in Israel, 
For that the people offered themselves willingly, 
Bless ye the Lord." 

The Southern church shares the recognized conserva- 
tism of ecclesiastical institutions and has an additional 
Cooperating measure of its own. It is not to discredit its 
Agencies: The ardent piety to say that it has shown itself 
Church j-j^g least adaptive of the reconstructive fac- 

tors of its section. With a few shining exceptions, leader- 
ship has not been in it. 

Before the war education was chiefly in its hands, and 
afterward the intense denominational spirit kept alive too 
many poorly supported and struggling schools, under the 
burden of which the impoverished sects well-nigh sank. 
Add to this that its type of education was polite and aris- 
tocratic, not popular and democratic, and it is clear that 
little outreach could be expected toward the less privileged 
elements of society. 

[5S] 



THE SOUTH AS MISSIONARY GROUND 

As regards the negro, the church fell more deeply the 
prey to mingled resentment and despair than did the 
secular educational forces. From the standpoint of states- 
manship some measure of education for him was under the 
new regime clearly inevitable; but the church did not rise 
even to that plane. It could not bring itself to teach the 
recent slave, and when the Northern teachers came (seem- 
ingly in the spirit of a new army of invasion bent rather 
on demonstrating the high capacities of the exceptional 
negro than on preparing the mass for practical and pro- 
ductive citizenship), Southern organized Christianity in 
the main withdrew from the task. This is not to forget nor 
minimize millions of helpful contacts with the negro in his 
upward struggle. Much personal sympathy, moral sup- 
port, and advice, and even money in no small measure, was 
given him. Especially fruitful have been the traditions 
of responsibility carried over by those Southern churches 
which had a large colored membership before the war — 
notably the Southern Presbyterian, the Methodist Epis- 
copal, South, and the Episcopal. Many faithful ministers 
have continued to preach to black Christians. But con- 
fessed, direct, and systematic efforts for the education 
and uplift of negroes have been largely lacking. The 
state has found less embarrassment, for Its operations 
have been official and its contacts have not Involved any 
social implications. But evangehzation and education at 
first hand clearly involve a degree of personal Christian 
fellowship which the Southern church in the main has 
hitherto been unwilling to grant. It has therefore with- 
held its hand from the work, partly from pique that the 
Northerner had undertaken it from what was Interpreted 
as a sectional standpoint, and partly because It was un- 
willing to do it from its own standpoint. This Is truth 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

in the large as the broadest Southern churchmen now con- 
fess. Thus Rev. Charles E. Bowman, d.d., of Georgia, 
recently said : " Assistance in the education of the negro 
has been practically monopolized by boards, societies, 
churches, and philanthropists of the North, and we have 
been disposed to let them have it, excusing ourselves with 
the claim that more is being done for the negro than for 
the poor white children of the South, and that we have 
more than we can do to look after our own." ^ There have 
been exceptions, and just now indications multiply of the 
coming of a better mind. 

In admitting that the Americanizing of the South is 
primarily the Southerner's problem one must not forget 
Cooperatinff ^^^ Southerner most deeply concerned ; 
Agencies: the namely, the negro himself. The rise of this 
JNegro Himself unprivileged race to bring salvation with its 
own arm is an unparalleled phenomenon. Beyond all its 
helpers it has helped itself. It has expended nearly ten 
million dollars for education besides its share of taxation. 
It has multiplied schools almost beyond number. The 
result in many details show great crudity and inexperi- 
ence, though in inadequacy and wastefulness the educa- 
tional policy of the negro churches is scarcely worse than 
that of sectarian education throughout the country at 
large. They have simply been imitating their supposed 
superiors. Both in bulk and in worthy accomplishment 
the negro's successes in elevating himself rise to colossal 
dimensions. If the South is to be praised for rapid prog- 
ress in public education, how much more the negro for the 
zeal which has built his hundreds of schools ! In the divi- 



* Annual Report of the Board of Education for the M. E. Church, South, 
1907, p. 128. 



THE SOUTH AS MISSIONARY GROUND 

sion of labor betAveen cooperating forces he bears not the 
least honorable and responsible part. 

Long before either of the Southern forces was ready or 
able to do a dominant or central work for the redemption 
Cooperating of the South, there had been in the field a 
Agencies: group of great nationaUzing agencies which 

Christian originated the ideal of the Americanizing of 

Philanthropy all Americans and set a standard for all suc- 
ceeding efforts for its reaHzation. The relative place of 
their work to-day is smaller, but their absolute burden is 
greater; for, all told, the assimilating resources have not 
increased as fast as unassimilated population, especially 
in view of the sterner demands of life in this age of rapid 
social transitions. The money and personality which they 
are now putting into the situation were never more essen- 
tial. Yet, after all, their chief contribution has been, and 
is, the maintenance of a national view-point. It has been 
their function to correct the emphasis of those who have 
attacked the problem with local prejudice, so that the 
general outcome should be balanced. They have not them- 
selves been free from all provincialism of method, but they 
have viewed national problems steadily and viewed them 
as a whole. This is the spirit of prophecy. 

The prophet has a strange and moving role in human 
history. From his far hilltop he looks down on the march- 
ing and countermarching of nations. He does not im- 
mediately belong to their problem, and its outcome seems 
none of his business. Yet somehow he turns out to have a 
better grasp of the situation than any participant has. 
He has a more unhindered access to the deepest sources 
of information than the man who has a personal in- 
terest in the fray. The strange outcome is that " whom 
he curses is cursed and whom he blesses is blest." He 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

thinks that his judgment of the tendencies of his day is 
based upon insight into the purposes of God. 

Our nation has had such men, who have definitely at- 
tempted to reaHze the divine purpose in America. Out of 
the strange human stuff providentially gathered they have 
tried to temper the national body together as it pleases 
God. Sometimes the nationalizing agencies used by such 
prophetic hearts have disguised their true function by 
callins; themselves denominational Boards. Sometimes the 
nominal character of these Boards has swamped their 
higher function ; but at the worst they comprise the 
most single-hearted and Christian factor which has entered 
into the problem. They have been essentially popular 
agencies, administering chiefly the genuine and unosten- 
tatious philanthropy of the " common folk " of the North. 

The American Missionary Association is typical of them. 
Founded in 1846, it gathered up several local organiza- 
The American ^^ons which had a common missionary impulse 
Missionary toward less privileged peoples. It had other 

Association work for the pioneer in the South and West ; 
for the Indian tribes, then counted as foreign ; for recently 
emancipated slaves in Jamaica and negro refugees in 
Canada, and for the heathen in half a dozen foreign lands. 
This shows the scope of the original idea as not sectional 
nor even exclusively national. Gradually, however, its 
foreign work was assigned to more specialized agencies, 
and the outcome of the Civil War gave the Association its 
chief burden in the persons of four and a half million of 
freedmen. Fraternal cooperation in the uplift of their 
nine million descendants still remains its first concern as 
also incomparably the greatest assimilating task before 
the nation. This Association discovered the Southern 
Highlander as a distinct type demanding a special Amer- 




A. F. Beaui). D.D. 
Corresponding Secretary American Missionary Association, 1887-1903 



THE SOUTH AS MISSIONARY GROUND 

icanizing effort. Its essential national character is re- 
vealed by its successive assumptions of responsibility for 
new and unexpected peoples which have come to us by con- 
quest or annexation. Its present work includes an evan- 
gelizing and educating ministry to all the non-European 
and mixed groups under our flag, and by a happy excep- 
tion which proves the rule, to the largest group of unas- 
similated white population, the mountaineer of the South- 
ern Appalachians. Thus it tries to perform its office 
in the midst of its brethren in a spirit of confessed 
cooperation. 

A tragic misunderstanding, the fruit of decades of sec- 
tional conflict, embittered by war and made doubly diffi- 
Cooperating ^ult by the blunders of Reconstruction, long 
Agencies: sundered the forces of uplift in the South. 

JomtEcIuca- rpj^^ ^^^ sections were temporarily incapable 
North and of ^ mutual trust, while the conservative 

South South, represented by the church, did not 

appreciate the ideals of the more advanced educators. 
The negro had aspirations sundering him even from his 
would-be helpers. It is a thrilling story how they all came 
together at last; how the carpetbag governments laid the 
foundation of popular education ; how in every state there 
arose a little handful of educational zealots of Southern 
birth who fought incredibly lonely, heroic fights to make 
good, after so long, Jefferson's \asion of a common school ; 
how before, and especially after the disbanding of the 
Freedman's Bureau, Northern Christian philanthropy 
undertook the education of the negro and later of the 
poor white; how its teachers toiled in fearful isolation, 
often ostracized, slowly learning the true needs of both 
races as only time can teach them; how the joint admin- 
istration by high-minded men of North and South, of the 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

splendid benefactions of George Peabody and others 
taught new possibiHties of cooperation and raised philan- 
thropy to the plane of constructive statesmanship ; how 
finally it dawned on men that there was a great unity of 
aim underneath all the separate agencies, and they drew 
together in a practical cooperation and good understand- 
ing which is the dominant character of Southern educa- 
tional effort to-day. 

The chief platform on which this good understanding 
has been reached is the Conference for Education in the 
Conference for South, organized in 1898. Here representa- 
Educationin tives of all interests met through a series of 
the South years, face to face, and worked out a common 

policy. To an unprecedented degree it appealed to a 
varied constituency, to politicians, to the press, to women's 
clubs, and somewhat to the clergy, as well as to the philan- 
thropist and the professional educator. 

It initiated a great and successful educational cam- 
paign in behalf of education throughout the entire section. 
Agreement on As a result of such cooperative effort a num- 
Ideals ber of ideals may be counted as established 

in the South. First, the development of popular education 
as a function of a democratic state is at once the highest 
philanthropy and the simplest justice. Agitation and 
organization must not cease until this is fully accom- 
plished throughout the section. To encourage this move- 
ment is the finest exercise of the nationalizing spirit. Its 
success is the basis for all other ministries to the unpriv- 
ileged classes. On the other hand, the clear lack of suffi- 
cient resources in the South as a section, and the inevi- 
table gaps in its educational program, must be met by help 
from the more favored sections operating through nation- 
alizing agencies, the cooperative spirit of whose work is 

[64] 



THE SOUTH AS MISSIONARY GROUND 

to be appreciated by all. The disorganization and waste 
of the past must cease. The well-meaning competition of 
half-starved institutions, ill-advised duplication of agen- 
cies, and congestion of unnecessary schools, especially for 
negroes (as in Atlanta), must give way to the great prin- 
ciples of order and efficiency. Benevolence must study 
each institution which appeals for aid ; whether it is wisely 
founded, strategically located, well conducted. The auxil- 
iary forces of Northern philanthropy must have a special 
strategy so as not to complicate injuriously the move- 
ment of the whole. Most of all, perhaps, the denomina- 
tional education of the Southern sects needs readjusting 
to an era of dominant public education. This requires a 
self-denying merging or abandonment of many institu- 
tions, preliminary to the strategic development of all the 
others. The educational policy of the negro churches, 
made aggressive by race consciousness and ecclesiastical 
pride, especially needs tempering by a sense of the whole 
situation and expert direction. Such economizing of re- 
sources through the application of the " trust " idea to 
Southern education has recently been attempted by the 
General Educational Board, administering Mr. Rocke- 
feller's endowments, and by affiliated agencies. These are 
by no means likely to be the controlling force of the 
future: neither the Southern states, the negro schools, 
nor the missionary Boards will submit to it. Yet their 
moral influence will be wide, and the lesson they empha- 
size is in hopeful process of being learned by all the educa- 
tional forces concerned. A well-understood division of 
labor is thus being achieved. All agencies are submitting 
to the test of efficiency. There are backward eddies, but 
this is the direction of the main current. 



65] 



III. THE SIFTING OF THE SOUTH 

I. THE TWO SOUTHS AND THE TWO SOUTHERNERS 

THE most outstanding fact about the South is 
that there are two Souths, lowland and highland. 
Once there was no South except the mountains. 
Beginning with New Jerse}'^, the Atlantic seaboard south 
to Florida, the lower half of the Gulf states, and the 

^ , . Mississippi Valley as far north as the 

Geographic ^^ i /-.i • 

Separation of mouth of the Ohio, were at the bottom oi 

theSouth's the sea. The waters lapped the feet of the 

wo ro ems mountains on the west, covering what is now 
the Blue Grass regions of Kentucky. This most ancient 
highland South — the South of Lincoln and Judge Hargis 
— looked out upon the ocean. Its most southern point 
was what is now central Alabama. Later the characteris- 
tic lowland South — the South of Jefferson Davis and of 
Lee — rose out of the waters as a level coastal plain, 
through which the broad wedge of the mountains thrust its 
rough fist far down through soft stretches of recent sea 
bottom toward the present waters of the Gulf. In these 
two strikingly distinct geographic provinces the two great 
human problems of the South are congested. The prob- 
lem of the belated white man is chiefly the problem of the 
highlands ; the problem of the negro is almost exclusively 
one of the plains. 

From their first settlement these two sections of the 
South have differed in temper and been antagonistic in 
Highland vs. politics. Historically the earliest associa- 
Lowland: tions of the uplands were with the North- 

Population The movement of population was southwest 

rather than directly west. The bulk of their immigration, 

[66] 



THE SIFTING OF THE SOUTH 



Scotch-Irish by birth, entered by way of Philadelphia and 
Baltimore, and worked down the great Appalachian valley 
rather than across the coastal plain from Atlantic ports. 

Cut off from tide-water not only by the falls of the 
rivers — the head of navigation — but also by a 
parallel strip of pine barrens through much of its 
length, this region was in many respects a projection 
of the Pennsylvania type into the very midst of the 
South. It was settled in the middle of the eighteenth 
century largely by migration from Pennsylvania of 
Scotch-Irish, Germans, and English pioneers, having 
Kttle contact with, or resemblance at first to, the sea- 
board life, either economically, politically, or socially. 
It was the first distinctively western region, non- 
slaveholding, grain and cattle raising, a land of dis- 
senting sects, of primitive democratic conditions, re- 
mote from the coast, and finding the connection with 
Baltimore, Philadelphia, and the Pennsylvania valley, 
both in spiritual and economic life, more intimate than 
with the tide-waters of Maryland, Virginia, North 
Carolina, and South Carolina, within whose boundary 
lines it chiefly lay.-*- 

The diverse civilization of mountain and plain thus root 
in their different origins. 

The first habitat of the upland Southerner was the Appa- 
lachian foot-hills rather than the true mountains. Later 
The Struggle ^^ ^^^ driven back into the mountains as a 
for the result of the unsuccessful struggle, political 

Piedmont g^^^ economic, with the lowlands. This 

struggle of up-country against tide-water is a significant 
clue of the earlier history of the six southern states crossed 

* Turner, "Is Sectionalism in America Dying Away?" American 
Journal of Sociology, vol. xiii, p. 665. 

[671 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

by the Piedmont Belt. " In every one the tide-water min- 
ority area, where wealth and slaves preponderated, ruled 
the more populous primitive interior counties by apportion- 
ment of the legislatures so as to secure the effective major- 
ity of the representatives. Unjustly taxed, deprived of 
due participation in government, their rights neglected, 
they protested, vainly for the most part, in each of these 
colonies and states." ^ Central North CaroUna, for ex- 
ample, previous to 1830, had a magnificent normal devel- 
opment as a region of small farms and diverse domestic 
industries supporting a prosperous yeomanry of Scotch- 
Irish, German, and Quaker descent. The plantation sys- 
tem crept up into it against the economic grain. The slave- 
holders wanted to rule the Piedmont more than they wanted 
to farm it. The uplands vainly resisted with an intense 
antislavery agitation. When finally they were over- 
come, their people emigrated wholesale, especially between 
1830 and 1840, into the mountains and beyond. " During 
that decade the white population of the state increased 
only 2.54 per cent compared with 12.79 per cent for the 
preceding period." ^ Thus the most virile and democratic 
part of the population was dispossessed of the better land 
and forced back into the poor and thinly populated moun- 
tain region. 

As a natural barrier the Southern Appalachians pre- 
sented no such absolute physical diflficulty as the Rocky 
The Fixing of Mountains, which civilization so triumphantly 
the Mountain crossed later. But their great width — some 
TyP® three hundred miles — and the unbroken 

length of their parallel ranges, proved too much for the 

' Turner, "Is Sectionalism in America Dying Away ? " American Journal 
of Sociology, vol. xiii, p. 666. 

2 Thompson, From Cotton Field to Cotton Mill, p. 30. 

[68] 



THE SIFTING OF THE SOUTH 



slight resources of the earlier pioneer. Their coves and 
narrow valleys caught him, and still hold his children in 
the civilization of a hundred years ago. Meanwhile the 
militant slaveholding South followed the coastal plains, 
added the new empire of the Southwest to its domain, and 
developed the peculiar mental and social aggressiveness 
which hurried the two great sections of the nation toward 
irrepressible conflict. But it is never to be forgotten that 
the first conflict of the South was within itself, and that 
the North fought with and for a consistent Southern 
minority. 

The crisis of war revealed still further the dominance of 
physiographic over political divisions. The lowlander 
Highland vs. stuck to his state against the nation ; the 
Lowland: the mountaineer clung to his region against his 
Civil War state. West Virginia was rent from the 

mother state and became a separate commonwealth. North 
Carolina slowly and reluctantly seceded. Kentucky, 
though south of the Ohio, remained within the Union. Ten- 
nessee sent a larger proportion of soldiers into the Federal 
armies than any Union state. Even in Alabama the com- 
paratively slight but rough upland region remained per- 
sistently Unionist, and contributed its regiments to the 
Northern cause. It is not too much to say that the moun- 
tains held the balance of power and turned the scales of 
war. Throughout the awful struggle the bitterest ani- 
mosity and cruelest deeds were between Southerner and 
Southerner, — mountaineer and lowlander, — in the border 
states. 

After the war the mountains remained stubbornly Re- 
pubhcan in politics. After 1876 the negro vote disap- 
peared and the South became seemingly solid. Yet 
through all political fluctuations the mountains stand fixed 



[69] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

and maintain the " geographical distribution of politics." ^ 
Except in national politics the South has never been solid, 
Highland vs. ^^^ there only by the arbitrary inclusion 
Lowland: within common state bounds of radically di- 

Politics verse populations. I am often asked by curi- 

ous Northern friends if I am not a Democrat in the South. 
My answer is that I have lived in the South for eight years, 
and in two different states, but always in a Republican 
county and in a congressional district which has been Re- 
publican most of the time since the war. State boundaries 
disregard physiographic barriers ; and under our Federal 
system it is the fate of persistent minorities to be forgotten 
in national politics. 

Thus from the beginning to the present time the two 
Souths have sifted their peoples. There are and always 
have been two Southerners, — each a splendid and appeal- 
ing type. Their characters have been molded by the inter- 
play of influences from the land and the social institutions 
built upon it. The land originated, the institutions accel- 
erated, their characteristic differences. Then the land 
and the institutions together fixed the respective types of 
mountain-men and lowlander. This distinction is the first 
clue to the understanding of the South. 

II. THE VARIED SOUTH 

By all natural rights the region of our country which 
ought to show sectional solidity in political opinion and 
The Land of typical civilization is that heart of the North, 
Contrast the thousand miles of plains which continue 

the gentle westward slope of the Alleghany plateau, across 

* See Plates II and III (1, 2, and 3) in Turner, "Is Sectionalism in 
America Dying Away ?" American Journal of Sociology, vol. xiii, pp. 664 ff. 

[70] 



THE SIFTING OF THE SOUTH 



the lake and p.rairie region, to where the great plains meet 
the bases of the Rocky Mountains. The ice-sheet anciently 
ground the soil of most of this region into virtual homo- 
geneity. To-day it dominates the nation with that same- 
ness of life which Mr. Bryce thinks characteristic of 
America. The South, on the contrary, exhibits a greater 
range of physical diversity than any other part of our 
domain. It is the geographically predestined land of 
contrasts. Not only does it present the great contrasts of 
mountain and' plain, but within each of these characteristic 
areas it shows a most intricate variety — in the form and 
contouB of the land, the quality and composition of the 
soil, and the consequent economic adaptations of its minor 
areas. This great variety of natural wealth means in the 
long run equal variety in human work and consequent 
diversity in population. 

Illustrations of these physical varieties are endless. Our 
national Department of Agriculture recognizes thirteen 
Physiographic physiographic belts between the Atlantic and 
and Soil the great plains. Five of these are crossed 

Provinces -j^ going westward from New York, eleven in 

going westward from Charleston. The soil-augur and 
laboratory tell a like tale. Of the nine soil provinces west 
of the great plains discriminated by the Soil Survey, six 
are almost wholly within the South, while on the contrary 
nine-tenths of the area north- of the Ohio and Missouri 
rivers belongs to a single soil province. So far as the 
soils of the North and South have been locally explored 
the results show greater unevenness of productivity in the 
characteristic Southern types. Detailed study of the wide- 
spread " Cotton Kingdom " discovers, that it ought to be 
peculiarly a realm* of diversified agriculture. 

Again, the broad coastal plain from Virginia to Missis- 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

sippi shows a virtually continuous division into parallel 
belts. The pine levels merge into the pine hills and an 
Black and infertile ridge of sand hills interposes itself, 

White "Belts" for much of the distance, between them and 
the Piedmont. The influences of these minor physiographic 
regions are as clear and permanent as those of the moun- 
tains and lowlands themselves. Indeed the distribution of 
population is minutely determined by them. In every state 
the negroes are found mostly in the pine hills between 
the plains and the Piedmont. They also hold the narrow 
fringe of alluvial coast lands and the alluvial regions of 
the lower Mississippi valley.^ Thus throughout its length 
the South is crossed by alternate population-belts of 
black and white. The familiar term " black belt " applied 
first to the black-colored soil of the landward portion of 
the " belted coastal plain " which crosses the center of 
Alabama. It was only secondarily applied to the massing 
of the negro population in this and similar regions of the 
South. In general it is the low-lying, moist and rich areas 
which are overwhelmingly colored, while the whites tend 
to the higher, dryer, and less fertile lands. These belts of 
population constitute a natural geographical basis for 
the further segregation of the races which is going on 
under social impetus. 

Now there have been from the beginning throughout the 
South persistent differences of population, whether white 
jy-a ■ or black, due to these diverse local environ- 

Population due ments ; but only intimate study of local his- 

to Local tory, state by state, reveals them. Older 

Environment j. • £ o i.\, ui i i. 

discussions or Southern problems almost en- 
tirely ignore them, and only recently has the work of a 
notable group of Southern state historians enabled us to 

' Kelsey, The Negro Farmer, pp. 14, 15. 
_ 



THE SIFTING OF THE SOUTH 



trace their influence.^ The general truth is that the South 
has included many peculiar areas each with its peculiar 
people. This is interestingly illustrated in the difficulty 
which the American* Missionary Association finds in classi- 
fying some of its institutions. In north central Alabama, 
for example, is an institution usually reckoned as a 
" mountain school." It is at the center of a group of 
Piedmont counties having less than one per cent of negro 
population, yet surrounded by others in which the negro 
population ranges from twenty-five to fifty per cent. This 
white island in the midst of a colored ocean is due to the 
fact that the Tennessee River cuts through the mountains 
at Chattanooga and isolates the lower end of the Piedmont 
region in the midst of surrounding lowlands. Its broken 
sand ridges are not too rough for the raising of cotton, 
which is the chief product. Yet there is scarcely a negro 
in the country. Many of the natives have never seen one. 
The driver who carries one over to the school comes from 
the " Valley." He is outraged to see white women and 
children picking cotton ; this is " niggers' " work. Thus 
the lowlander.does not recognize cotton without the negro. 
The mountaineer would not recognize cotton at all. In 
brief, the ordinary distinctions between southern types do 
not fit the people of this region. They are an intermedi- 
ate group, representing many similar ones — the products 
of limited local environments. 

The great physiographic groupings of population 
within the several states are easily discerned. North Caro- 
lina, Tennessee, and Georgia have each three clearly dis- 
tinguishable sections of about equal area; biit the more 
intricate diversities of this land of contrasts, which are 

' E. g. Fleming. Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama. See 
pp. 108 fF. 



[73] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

the true clue to Southern history, can only be realized by 
patient study. They have been almost totally concealed 
Th S th ^^ ^^® great struggle which compelled men to 

Naturally the forego their minor differences and join to- 
Least "Solid" gether in great contending armies. Except 
^ '°^ for the negro, the South would be the least 

solid section of America ; and in the long run geographical 
diversities will have their way, especially as industry and 
agriculture, following the lead of science, seek out the 
specific adaptation of each small area for the production 
of wealth. 

Only misunderstanding and injustice can result when this 
natural basis of persistent human differences is forgotten. 
So ■ 1 1 ft - There cannot be and there never was any uni- 
tions Colored formity of social conditions throughout the 
by Local En- South — even under the immense pressure 
of its sectional institutions. The local char- 
acter of slavery was economically determined, and the insti- 
tution everywhere colored by the varying fortunes of the 
master class. The condition of the slave was not the same 
on the exhausted seaboard soils as in the still prosperous 
middle districts. It was still different on the frontier. The 
varying reports which vexed the nation through all the 
period of the antislavery agitation were due to varying 
facts. Within the slave population too there were distinct 
economic classes. The status of the field-hand was practi- 
cally different from that of the skilled mechanic or of the 
household servant and petty overseer.^ Then there was 
a considerable minority of freed negroes, many of whom 
had considerable wealth and some culture, and some- 
times an organized and recognized distinction between 
the mulatto and the black negro. In Charleston a mu- 

' Hart, Slavery and Abolition, pp. 96 ff. 
_ 



THE SIFTING OF THE SOUTH 



latto society, the " Brown Fellowship," has existed for 
over a hundred years, maintaining its social exclusive- 
ness and its private cemetery. For many years it operated 
select schools for mulattoes only. The public records of 
that city still recognize a distinction between the mulatto 
and negro. Naturally, too, there was a difference between 
city and country, affecting both races. Back of these 
antebellum distinctions stretch dim vistas of African his- 
tory, the untold story of long mingled races whose varie- 
ties only the most recent writers are adequately recogniz- 
ing.^ The differences developed in the negro by these an- 
cient siftings go far toward explaining his unequal response 
to the demands and needs of the present day. It is equally 
true that the ordinary versions of the state of white society 
in the South before the war are altogether more simple 
than the facts. It was the general tendency of slavery to 
push the non-slaveholding white man down into the " poor 
white " class, and out into the less fertile agricultural 
regions. Still, even in the lower South, the middle class 
did ^not wholly disappear, and considerable areas in every 
state maintained a characteristically democratic organi- 
zation of society. If such differences could maintain them- 
selves then, how little cause to expect uniform conditions 
now.'' The fact is that social conditions in the South are, 
like the land itself, infinitely complex. 

There is, therefore, but one generalization which it Is 
safe to make about the South ; namely, that one must not 
The Evil of generalize at all. This is particularly true 
Generalization of all attempted judgments upon its belated 
and unassimilated populations. The negro does not show 
any uniform " race tendency " throughout the South. He 
is not generally given to an abnormal death-rate or to ex- 
' See Dowd, The Negro Races, p. 415. 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

cessive crime ; neither is he uniformly successful in acquir- 
ing property or education. There is no equal development 
of race consciousness or pride. All attempts to show per- 
manent race tendency in these matters are futile. Existing 
statistics are deceptive. They seem to admit of an accurate 
comparison of the negro with the white ; but they are not 
compiled separately for that part of the white population 
with which it is fair to compare the negro, namely, that 
belonging to the same economic and social status ; and 
therefore they are practically worthless unless corrected 
by a knowledge of the local conditions which they attempt 
to generalize. The newer sociology is righting itself in 
this matter. It is continually narrowing its " unit of in- 
vestigation " and seeking to do justice to the many human 
varieties molded by the diversity of natural environment 
and of work.^ Meanwhile the bitterest injustice of gen- 
eralization still characterizes popular judgments. The 
mountaineer, newly sensitive to the world's opinion, is 
justly resentful of sweeping alien statements as to his 
condition and his needs. His group is by no means homo- 
geneous. Where there are mountains there are valleys, 
and these have been the ancient routes of travel and early 
seats of civilization. At the head waters of the Clinch and 
Holston, Sevier and his companions founded the " State 
of Franklin," which was in 1790, and has always continued 
to be one of the most thickly populated regions in the 
Union. The " Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains " 
can literally look down on the domes of colleges a hundred 
years old. The mountaineer of fiction and romance is but 
the most isolated and least progressive class within the 
larger mountain province. Highland as well as lowland, 
the South is a region of variety. 

* See Ross, The Foundations of Sociology, ch. iv. Also pp. 79 and 311 fif. 

_ 



THE SIFTING OF THE SOUTH 

And now under the mighty and exuberant forces of the 
freed and awakened South, the future tends to bring forth 
still greater variety of human life. Uniform progress is 
not to be expected either in the lowlands or in the high- 
lands — on the part of the negro or of the backward white 
man. 

III. THE CRISIS OF THE SIFTING 

To-day finds the South at the crisis of its sifting. It is 
characteristically a " growing South." It has become part 
The "Growing of a new age which is silently resifting all 
South " civilized peoples. Vast forces — with which 

none of us are quite at home, so suddenly have they come 
into play — have gripped the South with revolutionary 
violence. An anciently primitive, rural, and agricultural 
section, feudally organized, is rapidly becoming modern, 
urban, and industrial. For the first time its fatal pre- 
occupation with the race problem has been broken in upon 
by a whole new group of urgent social questions. The 
rise of the industrial labor problem, with the gradual evo- 
lution of modern organized labor and of a new class of 
Southern industrial masters, compels in the whole section 
a new attitude toward work. The fact of woman as an 
economic producer in the mills of the South and as a com- 
petitor with men in its business offices challenges the whole 
Southern ideal of the relation of the sexes. With this 
totter a thousand social conventions of the old regime, 
beautiful but doomed. With the new growth of wealth 
the old aristocracy of birth is threatened and often sub- 
merged. The invasion of the South by the Hebrew mer- 
chant has been eventful almost beyond that of the North- 
ern armies. In every Southern state dominant poHtical 
power has come into the hands of the " poor whites." This 

' TttT " 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

is almost as revolutionary as was the carpetbag era.^ 
Southern education, which was studiously polite and apart 
from the practicalities of life, has leaped to the other 
extreme and leads the nation in its industrial and voca- 
tional tendencies. More slowly, yet significantly, the new 
habit of scientific candor attacks the theological and social 
dogmas of the South. The struggle for independent 
judgment — a characteristic feature of this age of tran- 
sition — against the peculiar tyranny of sectional tra- 
ditionalism, creates a new type of Southern leaders, heroic 
beyond their peers. For the first time in a century the 
South is developing, not on a tangent to, but in direct line 
with the choicest currents of Western civilization. Yet 
however we may glorify the process we must remember and 
regret its human wreckage and debris — the thousand 
" men of yesterday " whom the age is sifting out as un- 
equal to its strenuous demands and its speedy ascent. 

These mighty changes cannot but be especially crucial 
for the backward and unassimilated peoples. To them 
m, T. 1 . they mean life or death. The belated moun- 
People's "Bad taineer and the undeveloped negro stand 
Quarter of an to-day in an acute stage of what the sociolo- 
gist calls the selective process. Never before 
and perhaps not again for a century will the test of fitness 
be so insistent and so searching. It is not to be expected 
that either group should come off whole. No race was 
ever saved wholesale, least of all the Anglo-Saxon. By 
migration, war, pestilence, and economic stress he has been 
sifted and resifted ; he has been tried in a furnace seven 
times heated. His salvation is the salvation of the rem- 
nant. The negro lacks thousands of years of the Saxons' 
sifting. The selective forces, which have made the Ameri- 
^ See Brown, Lower South in American History, p. 256. 




Old Memphis 
Negro tenants in attics and basements of white homes 




New Jackson 
Real estate office and advertisement of negro residential subdivision 



THE SIFTING OF THE SOUTH 



can of to-day what he is, were suspended for the moun- 
taineer a century ago. The test which the rest of the 
nation has gradually met, these must undergo suddenly and 
without preparation. Each is having just now his "bad 
quarter of an hour." Every so-called " problem " of 
these backward stocks is just some phase or other of this 
selective process and as such must be judged. 

The participation of the mountains in the rapid tran- 
sitions of the new South is manifest chiefly in three 
movements. 

First, the exodus of mountain population to the cotton- 
mills and industrial cities. This is part of the world move- 
Exodus from ment from country to city. In the case of 
the Mountains the mountaineer it is particularly pathetic 
because of his ignorance, his ingrained individualism and 
his lack of moral preparedness for city life. Whole coun- 
ties are being well-nigh depopulated by emigration, and 
the problem of some sections of the mountains is whether 
there will be any people left in them. This transition is 
in itself a radical sifting. Under urban conditions the 
incapable sink into a singularly inert and hopeless class, 
well known to the charity organizations of the Southern 
cities. The capable, on the other hand, with marvelous 
rapidity become complete Americans and themselves mas- 
ters of material progress. 

Second, the invasion of the mountains by industry. 
When the mountaineer will not come to the mill the mill 
Invasion of the S^es after the mountaineer. The insatiable 
Mountains by demand of modem industry for new and un- 
Industry exploited labor power has resulted in a mar- 

velously interesting movement of industrial enterprise into 
the mountains. Their inaccessibility was such that all of 
Europe and even Asia were ransacked for workers before 



79] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

their fastnesses were attacked; but now the most unHkely 
places are invaded. No more violent test can be forced 
upon a primitive population than this of becoming indus- 
trialized ; and the mountaineer is bearing it unequally. 
To one man, or family, it means not only a better wage, 
but an enlarged outlook on life and an escape from petty 
and narrow tradition ; to another it means only exploit- 
ation, degradation, and vice. 

Third, the invasion of the mountains by leisure. Less 
massive, yet deeply significant, is the change coming over 
Invasion of the ^^^ mountaineer through the exploitation of 
Mountains by his region by wealth in search of rest and 
Leisure recreation. Situated as the Southern Appa- 

lachians are between North and lowland South, their mild 
climate and beauty of scenery makes them increasingly the 
natural playground and the meeting-place of leisure for 
both sections. Not only are there much-frequented health 
resorts like Asheville, but new armies of invading tourists 
and seasonal residents keep breaking in upon the moun- 
tain people with alien customs and standards of life. They 
make an even more subtle and dangerous attack than in- 
dustry does upon the essential genius and spirit of this 
our most democratic and peculiarly American remnant. 
The native is outclassed and is often reduced to servile 
attendance upon the pleasure-seeker, whose manners and 
dress set new fashions and whose freely-spent money 
rapidly overturns all local standards of value. The result 
is frequently a certain loss of independence and of that 
staunch self-respect which is the most wholesome and at- 
tractive heritage of the mountain people. Yet this same 
tourist invasion brings also ideals of culture and refine- 
ment and opens possibilities of life which create new worlds 
to many an aspiring mountain youth. 



THE SIFTING OF THE SOUTH 



Thus the sifting of the mountain goes on, and intensely, 
even as we read these lines. 

The present crisis of the negro's sifting is outwardly 
shown in five significant aspects : 

First, the redistribution of population.^ The present 
movements of the negro are more general and massive 
Two Move- than at any other time since his coming to 
ments of Negro America. They take two directions — first, 
Population ^Q ^}^g Southern and, more recently, espe- 

cially to the Northern cities. On the whole his city-ward 
movement is not as rapid as that of population in general, 
but he is less equal to city life, and the result of the urban 
sifting is terribly acute. Scarcely less important is the 
fact of the negro's massing in the Black Belt. In our pre- 
vious discussion we have seen that he was carried up into 
the Appalachian foot-hills against the natural economic 
grain of that region. The present movement is a revul- 
sion from the Piedmont and a massing in the valleys, the 
low prairies, and coast lands. From the standpoint of 
state boundaries this means that the ratio of negroes in 
several border states is rapidly diminishing with a corre- 
sponding increase in the lower South. Of ninety-seven 
counties in Virginia, sixty actually lost negro population 
between 1890 and 1900. The coming census will probably 
show still farther movements in this direction. Whatever 
may be the minor significance of this movement it in gen- 
eral indicates the affinity of the negro for the lower, hotter, 
and, as it happens, the more fertile regions of the South. 

Second, the newly mobile negro population is increas- 
ingly subject to alarming social evils. Such transitional 
maladies always attack people who are undergoing violent 

' Kelsey, The Negro Farmer, pp. 12 ff; Commons, Races and Immi- 
grants in America, pp. 54 ff. 



[81] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

social changes. The negro seems to show new physical 
weakness. His death-rate is, roughly speaking, double 
Transitional that of the white population. On the face 
Maladies of the returns he seems to be far and away the 

least promising element of our people morally. His crime 
rate is especially excessive. Yet sociological insight pro- 
nounces these to be the usual traits of peoples in like 
circumstances. They are acute phases of the selective 
process. 

Third, there has come to be a marked differentiation of 
elements within the negro population. The negro has dis- 

^.„ . . tributed himself throughout all of the eco- 

Differentiation , ,• •■• /• * • ••!•■• a 

nomic activities or American civilization. A 

magazine writer puts the case rather jauntily as follows: 

A large city could be formed without a single white 
man in it, and yet lack for no trade or profession. 
There are 21,268 negro teachers and college profes- 
sors in the United States, and 15,530 clergymen. 
The negroes could finance a railroad through their 
82 bankers and brokers, lay it out with their 120 civil 
engineers and surveyors, condemn the right of way 
with their 728 lawyers, make the rails with their 
12,327 iron and steel workers, build the road with 
their 545,980 laborers, construct its telegraph system 
with their 185 electricians and their 529 linemen, and 
operate it with their 55,327 railway employes. 

Colored people complain that they have to sit in the 
gallery in white theaters, but their 2043 actors and 
showmen might give them theaters of their own in 
which they could occupy the boxes in solitary gran- 
deur. They have 52 architects, designers, and drafts- 
men, 236 artists and teachers of art, 1734 phy- 
sicians and surgeons, 212 dentists, 210 journalists, 
3921 musicians and teachers of music, and 99 literary 



THE SIFTING OF THE SOUTH 



and scientific persons. The colored baby can be in- 
troduced to the world by negro physicians and nurses, 
instructed in every accomplishment by negro teachers, 
supplied with every requisite of life by negro mer- 
chants, housed by negro builders, and buried by a 
negro undertaker. 

There are negro bookkeepers and accountants, 
clerks and copyists, commercial travelers, merchants, 
salesmen, stenographers and telegraph operators. 
Negroes are in every manual trade, — carpenters, 
masons, painters, paper-hangers, plasterers, plumbers, 
steam-fitters, chemical workers, marble-cutters, glass- 
workers, fishermen, bakers, butchers, confectioners, 
millers, shoemakers, tanners, watchmakers, gold and 
silversmiths, bookbinders, engravers, printers, tailors, 
engineers, photographers, glove-makers, — everything 
that statisticians think it worth while to count. And 
the curious thing is that in whatever line a negro man 
is at work there also is a negro woman. The only oc- 
cupation which the colored women have allowed their 
men folk to monopolize are those of the architect and 
banker and broker, the telegraph and telephone line- 
men, the boiler-maker, the trunk-maker, and the pat- 
tern-maker. You can hire a negro civil engineeress and 
an electricienne. There are 164 colored clergy women, 
262 black actresses, and 10 Afro- American female 
lawyers. One negro woman works as a roofer, another 
as a plumber, and 45 of them are blacksmiths, iron and 
steel workers, and machinists. Three are wholesale, 
and 860 are retail merchants. Others are journal- 
ists, literary persons, artists, musicians, government 
officials, and practitioners of an infinite variety of 
skilled and unskilled trades. 

Such achievement is the result of a brief and imperfect 
sifting. There was an infinitely wider range of capacity 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

and possible usefulness within the race than the most 
sanguine could have imagined when the slave was freed. 

A full quota of social classes has also appeared, and the 
stratification of negro society has proceeded almost as fast 
as that of white. Every considerable Southern community 
now shows a complete and almost sclf-sufHcient negro 
group life, with its separate institutions and ideals, within 
that of the general population. The organized life of the 
American negro is fast becoming an imperium in imperio. 

Fourth, there is an increasing segregation of the negro 
population from the white. Its development from within 
and its new habit of self-dependence, results 
in a growing loss of contact with the general 
life. This is necessarily so in those geographically dis- 
tinct Black Belts in which the negro is massing. Within 
the cities, too, the races tend increasingly to occupy sepa- 
rate sections ; while the social ban and barrier on the 
whole certainly grow more rigid. This means the tem- 
porary withholding of great untouched masses of the 
race from the acute sifting which their city-going brethren 
are experiencing. It is certain to prolong indefinitely 
the problem of the complete assimilation of the negro. 
Cut off from the stimulus of white civilization, he fre- 
quently shows reversionary tendencies toward African 
conditions. On the other hand, segregation in the rural 
regions tends to hold in reserve the sounder element of 
the race, from which capacity and moral health may be 
supplied to the future. All peoples need such a reserve 
force from which recruits can come, not too rapidly, under 
the strenuous demands of civilization. Thus the withhold- 
ing of the Black Belt from the acute sifting of the present 
has an important and favorable bearing on the ultimate 
prospects of the American negro. 

[84] 



THE SIFTING OF THE SOUTH 



Fifth, as a result of the partial and incomplete sifting 
of the immediate past, a negro minority has emerged fully 
Emergence of prepared for participation in American civ- 
the"New ilization. This emerged class, the "talented 

^^S^o tenth," is a new human type, bearing the 

characters of freedom and demonstrating the immense ad- 
vantage of even the limited democratic opportunity which 
the race has had since emancipation. It had a certain his- 
toric basis in the attainments of the free negro of the old 
regime and the privileges of certain upper classes of slaves ; 
yet its essential traits have never before been attained by 
the negro. For the first time in his history there is the firm 
establishment of monogamous marriage and the ideals of 
the Christian home. The first generation of children born, 
of such homes are just entering upon independent life. 
This group, too, has developed a genuine culture, includ- 
ing distinctive esthetic and ethical marks of negro genius, 
which constitutes a yet unmeasured contribution to the 
ideal life of the world, yet sharing the best thought, feel- 
ing, and activity of Western civilization. It has developed 
manifold organs of social control and reached a magnifi- 
cent place of leadership over the general negro mass. On 
the other hand there are manifest tendencies for the 
emerged class to break away from that mass. Hitherto it 
has consisted largely of mulattoes, and one of the most 
fateful questions for the American negro is whether the 
mulatto group will attempt to regard itself as an inter- 
mediate race between the white and black, or accept that 
identification with the negro to which white sentiment 
assigns it. This is the deepest issue within the higher 
negro classes to-day.-^ Upon this issue race leaders are 
divided and by it race sentiment is being sifted. Whatever 
' Baker, " Following the Color-Line," The Mulatto, ch. viii. 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

else the emergence of such a group signifies, it is clear 
that among those socially classified as negroes there was 
a considerable minority who are not unfit for the compe- 
titions and achievements of white civilization. Under 
slavery its members were socially suppressed. So far, at 
least, the inferior status of the race was not due to inferior 
capacity. Now that part — and only part — of the pres- 
sure has been removed their fitness manifests itself, and 
they take their natural place of successful leadership. The 
progress of the negro under this leadership has already 
been marvelous, and is a reliable indication of still wider 
capacity and potential worth awaiting to be revealed when 
opportunity is more perfectly equalized. 

Such are some of the phases of the great process of 
social selection working in the South. To illustrate and 
interpretate them still further will be the work of subse- 
quent discussions. 

IV. STUDY OF THE WELL-SIFTED NEGRO 
COMMUNITY 

What the process of selection concretely means and how 
it actually works out is best realized through the study 
of the particular population. Thomasville, Georgia, shows 
such a well-sifted negro community. The facts relating to 
it here summarized were gathered by Rev. William H. Hol- 
loway, pastor of the local Congregational church. 

In 1900, Thomasville was a city of 3296 colored and 
2026 white population. It has grown to probably 8000 
people, about the same relative proportion between the 
races being maintained. The county had at the last census 
17,4*50 negroes and 13,626 whites. It is part of the 
" Black Belt " lying in Southwestern Georgia, about 
twenty miles above the Florida line. 



THE SIFTING OF THE SOUTH 



An investigation of the distribution of the two races 
within the city Hmits of Thomasville shows clearly the 
Segregation of tendency to segregation. The negroes 
the Races occupy solidly four distinct areas lying in 

general toward the outskirts of the city. Some of their 
better homes are near the center, and, in fact, they are 
well represented on the best streets, but such property was 
acquired before the recent growth in population. Con- 
tiguity between the races is due largely to the filling in of 
population between. A negro would not now easily find 
a central location. There is a marked tendency, and one 
vigorously encouraged by both races, toward geographical 
separation. 

On this account the most extensive of recent movements 
of negro population have been suburban. Within five 
Suburban years three distinct sections beyond the city 

Development limits have been developed as exclusive resi- 
dential sections for the race. In them the acquirement of 
property and the building of homes has gone on most 
extensively. These developments have been modern, fur- 
nished with streets and drainage. Trees have been 
planted, and in one of the new additions a children's 
playground established. The district adjoining the 
American Missionary Association school, called the 
Normal School Annex, has seen the erection of thirty- 
five comfortable little homes and half as many more 
lots sold to prospective builders. In " Dewey City " 
twenty or more cottages have been built, while in a single 
season over a hundred lots were bought and several 
homes built in Normal School Park. Similar develop- 
ments of exclusive residential sections for negroes are 
going on in most of the South Georgia cities. They 
are partly due to the activity of real estate promoters 



[87] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

but rest back upon the community building spirit of the 
race. 

The development of these residential sections means not 
merely the geographical separation of the negro from the 
Segregation white population, but also the geographical 
within the separation of the better from the poorer 

Negro Race classes of negroes. It means segregation 
within the race. Whole streets and blocks of negro homes 
stand in sharp contrast to equal areas of tenant prop- 
erty. The houses are invariably painted, the yards neatly 
fenced, the surroundings generally beautified by shrubs 
and flowers. Within these homes are mothers and daugh- 
ters who are primarily home makers. Frequently they em- 
ploy servants. Such negroes maintain their own social 
distinction as strictly as do any American group. The 
tenant quarters, on the other hand, show long rows of bare, 
decrepit, unkempt cabins where turbaned Amazons may 
be seen washing over fires built in the front yards, or cut- 
ting their own fuel from the log, fences and door-steps 
frequently being used for kindling. These external con- 
trasts stand for deep differences between negro groups. 
They are evidences of the sifting of the race. 

It has been found impossible to collect complete infor- 
mation as to the ownership of homes by Thomasville 
negroes. Large areas within the city limits have been 
built up, and the negroes almost invariably own the prop- 
erty which they occupy, while the suburban developments 
just described are virtually all extensions of home owner- 
ship. " It is rare," says Mr. Holloway, " to find a colored 
man who has lived any number of years in Thomasville, 
who does not wholly or in part own his own home." City 
taxes in 1907 were paid by negroes on $189,000 worth 
of property — undoubtedly a conservative estimate, for 

fssl 




Home of Negro Landlord, Tho>iasvii,le, Ga. 
Tenant houses adjoining 




Negro Artisan and Street of Artisans' Homes, Thomasville, Ga. 



THE SIFTING OF THE SOUTH 



the colored man has learned from his white neighbor how 
to return as small a tax Hst as possible. 

Eighteen business enterprises carried on by negroes are 
housed in property owned by members of the race. These 
Business range in value from $2500 to $7500 and are 

Property situated in all parts of the town. Near the 

business center on Broad Street is a two-story brick build- 
ing in which the negro owner conducts a first-class shoe 
business. On Jackson Street, the second business street 
of Thomasville, is a $3000 building in which the negro 
owner carries on his own grocery business. Another negro 
owns unimproved property worth $3000. 

The most surprising extension of ownership by Thomas- 
ville negroes is, however, in the Hne of property for rental 
Rental purposes. Mr. Holloway has tabulated 207 

Property separate dwellings, valued at from $75 to 

$1000, owned and rented by them. Ten of them are rented 
to whites. The most extensive negro landlord is a widow, 
Mrs. Toomer Hamilton. In a single block she has sixteen 
tenements, and in all twenty-six pieces of rented property, 
bringing her in a comfortable monthly income. The prop- 
erty was first acquired by her late husband, a successful 
liveryman, but has been added to by the shrewdness of 
his widow. Another negro landlord has twelve rental 
houses, another seven, and many others own from one to 
five. 

All told this makes an impressive showing of property 
ownership by the Thomasville negro. To be sure the value 
of his property averages much less than that of the whites, 
but as representing the acquirement of the race within forty 
years it is most creditable. Moreover, as indicating a 
tendency toward ownership it is highly significant. Prob- 
ably as many negroes own property in Thomasville in 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

proportion to their numbers as whites do, and according 
to the real estate agents they are now building homes twice 
as fast as the white population. 

Appended to this paragraph is a table showing that 
there are eighty professional negroes in Thomasville, rep- 
Occupations: resenting fifteen different professions. A 
Professional very disproportionate number of them are 
preachers. The list indicates, however, that the Thomas- 
ville negro group is almost self-sufficient in the matter of 
professional service. It carefully limits itself, moreover, 
to those only whose professional standing is commonly 
called first-class. Thus there are many nurses able to 
command as much as $10 per week for their services, but 
only the two who are graduates of nurse-training schools 
are listed. 

The two physicians have each an extensive practise. 
Both are graduates of reputable medical colleges and have 
licenses from the Georgia Medical Association. One has 
practised in Thomasville eight years, the other five. They 
receive all professional courtesies from the white physicians 
and have equal privileges in the use of the city hospital. 

The colored dentist is also a graduate of a first-class 
institution. His well-appointed office has the latest type 
of pneumatic chair and a cabinet of modern instruments. 
The colored community gives him an almost exclusive 
patronage. 

The entire force of mail-carriers, numbering four, is 
colored. All happen to be graduates of schools of the 
American Missionary Association and members of the Con- 
gregational church. The positions were of course secured 
by competitive examination. 

Of the fourteen negro pastors of Thomasville, five are 
college graduates, two of whom hold also diplomas from 

[90] 



THE SIFTING OF THE SOUTH 



Northern divinity schools. These five serve the largest 
and most intelligent congregations. In thoughtfulness 
and careful preparation their preaching is in striking con- 
trast to the emotionalism of the old-fashioned negro ex- 
horter. They are men of good character, whose chief 
shortcoming is parochial narrowness and blindness to the 
large mission of the church to the community. 

The nine other preachers represent the older type. 
With one or two exceptions they are ignorant and most of 
them are immoral. Nowhere indeed is the moral sifting of 
the race more strongly marked than in its church life. 

The Thomasville negro has an almost undisputed monop- 
oly in skilled industry. The statistics of the appended 
Occupations; table are compiled from the books of the 
Industrial labor-unions and list only first-class work- 

men, who constitute only about one-fourth of the mem- 
bership. In the Carpenters' Union, for example, out of a 
membership of seventy-four only about twenty command 
the highest wage, $2.50 to $3 per day. Many of the 
palatial winter homes of the Northerners, some costing 
upward of $100,000, were almost entirely built by Thomas- 
ville negro workmen. All the white contractors of the city 
have negro foremen and there are three licensed colored 
contractors. 

At the time of Mr. Holloway's investigation the city 
had just given to a colored man a $30,000 contract for an 
addition to the sewer system. Negro contractors had also 
secured the brick work for the new city hall and for the 
two brick business buildings then being erected. The 
negroes say there are no first-class white carpenters or 
masons in Thomasville. The same question put to a 
white contractor brought the answer that perhaps three 
white carpenters were first-class and two masons. This 



[91] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

shows the dominant place of the negro in the building 
industries. 

Many of the skilled negro workmen live in comfortable 
homes and bear the highest reputation for character in the 
community. 

The appended table shows that in the whole range of 
skilled industry the Thomasville negro holds a command- 
ing position. There is not a single occupation in which 
he is not found, and in which he does not compete success- 
fully with white workmen. This, however, has led to little 
industrial friction, white and colored laborers working side 
by side on almost all jobs. Indeed this is usual in the 
smaller places throughout the South. In a recent car- 
penters' strike for a nine-hour day, white and colored 
unions met in conference, and when their demands were 
refused all stuck together. 

The three blocks of Jackson Street leading up from 
the railroad station to Broad Street are in importance the 
Occupations: second business center of Thomasville; the 
Business street, a paved thoroughfare with electric 

lights, good water and sewerage facilities, and lined with 
substantial brick stores. In these three blocks there are 
twenty-six different enterprises conducted by negroes. 
Their patronage is, naturally, chiefly within the race, but 
the better firms have also considerable white trade. In fact 
whenever the negro store is believed to carry a high grade 
of stock and to furnish first-class service it is favorably 
regarded by a large number of Southern white patrons. 
This fact has been the means of raising the standard in a 
considerable number of enterprises. While many of the 
twenty-six are businesses with small stocks and poor fix- 
tures, an increasing number are thoroughly equipped and 
in every way creditable. Mr. H. Daniels, for example, in 

[9^] 




Negro Business Men's Homes, Tho.masvii.le, Ga. 




Negro Drug Store and Proprietor, Thojiasvili.e, Ga. 



THE SIFTING OF THE SOUTH 



twelve years of business, has come to own a fine grocery- 
store, occupying his own two-story brick building. He 
also conducts a first-class colored restaurant and a barber 
shop, runs a woodyard, and has considerable real estate 
which he rents to whites as well as negroes. In ten years 
Robert Mitchell, formerly an itinerant fishmonger, has 
acquired the largest stock of general merchandise of any 
colored business man. He has a branch store in the sub- 
urbs and owns five rental houses. Of the seven grocery 
firms on Jackson Street, five have been in the business for 
over seven years and one boasts a fifteen years' record. 
In addition to the Jackson Street business center, there are 
fifteen suburban stores run by negroes. The Local Busi- 
ness Men's League claims that at least two-thirds of the 
colored grocery patronage of Thomasville is held by negro 
merchants. 

The strong tendency thus revealed toward a self- 
sufficient group life is of comparatively recent origin. It 
Development ^^ interesting to note the circumstances which 
of Race have brought race consciousness to light and 

Consciousness hastened its development. For example, the 
colored physician had but a precarious practise until a 
well-to-do negro called in a young white doctor to attend 
his wife. The doctor walked into the patient's room with 
his hat on and sat down on the bed with a smoking 
cigarette in his mouth. The husband leaned upon the 
bedside, as he said, " mad enough to fight a cross-cut 
saw." He made no remonstrance, but later tore up 
the white doctor's prescription and called in a colored 
doctor. Probably no other white doctor in Thomasville 
would have been guilty of such discourtesy ; yet, under 
the strained condition of race feeling, the incident 
set the negro community against all white doctors. 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

Now the tendency is strong to favor physicians of their 
own race. 

The case of the negro dentist was similar. For years 
a prominent white dentist had held practically all the pat- 
ronage of the negro population, making no discrimination 
in his treatment of them. Whites were made to wait their 
turn when negro patients were in the chair. When this 
man retired from active practise, new white dentists came 
in, who set up second-hand chairs for negroes in their 
back storerooms. The same prices, however, were charged, 
and in response to this discrimination, the negro community 
imported and now exclusively patronizes its own dentist. 

Similarly a leading millinery store inaugurated the cus- 
tom of not allowing any negro customer to try on a hat. 
She must be satisfied with viewing it on the head of the 
white clerk. When a colored minister's wife was refused 
this privilege the minister took the incident to his con- 
gregation. As a result the firm lost all its colored pat- 
ronage and soon went into the hands of a receiver. 

These incidents indicate two things : on the part of the 
negro, a new sensitiveness as to his rights and a new con- 
sciousness of racial resources ; on the part of the later 
generation of whites, new tendencies to discrimination. 

Between seven and ten colored insurance employees make 
daily rounds to the homes of the negro community, collect- 
NeffTo Institu- ^^S ^^^ small dues which secure sick and acci- 
tions: dent benefits. They represent three com- 

Economic panics, one with headquarters in New York, 

the other two large Georgia institutions, organized and 
operated by negroes. Three years ago the legislature 
enacted some undoubtedly necessary laws to regulate such 
companies. Probably, however, their immediate instiga- 
tion was by white insurance companies in the hope of put- 

_ 



THE SIFTING OF THE SOUTH 



ting their negro rivals out of business. The result was ' 
that a large number of local companies combined and three 
negro insurance enterprises were able to make the deposit 
of $5000 required by state law. 

Almost every negro home in Thomasville carries policies 
in some one of these companies. A weekly premium of five 
cents secures a sick benefit of $2 per week and a death 
benefit of $10. Ten cents secures a sick benefit of $3 
and a death benefit of $15. Twenty-five cents secures a 
sick benefit of $5 and a death benefit of $25. In addition 
to this humbler type of insurance, Mr. Holloway reports 
that a number of families carry policies in regular " old- 
line " companies. Georgia has also two negro fire insur- 
ance companies, one of which maintains an office in Thomas- 
ville and secures a large share of negro patronage. 

Besides their churches already enumerated, the Thomas- 
ville negro community has a full quota of social institu- 
Negrolnstitu- tions. An organization of colored women 
tions of the called the " How to Live Club " has a mem- 
High Life bership of about forty. Besides literary 
features, it has undertaken as its particular work the sup- 
port of the colored ward in the city hospital. The 
Women's Federation is building a negro " Old Folks' 
Home." Some thousand dollars have been collected for 
this purpose, and the race is thus attempting to keep its 
aged members from the hardship of the county poorhouse. 

Besides a public school, poorly housed, and with almost 
no playground, there are two schools for Thomasville 
negroes supported by philanthropy. One is a small 
parochial enterprise attached to an Episcopal Church and 
taught by its minister. The other, Allen Normal Insti- 
tute, a well-equipped and growing girls' seminary, admits 
boys also as day pupils. This institution is described at 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

length in another connection. These private schools are 

patronized almost exclusively by the better class of 

negroes. Thus segregation within the race is expressed 

also in its education. 

The relations between negro and white in Thomasville 

are on the whole kindly and mutually helpful. There are 

_, ^ occasional frictions, but they have never been 

Race Contacts . -p. . . . , . , i ii 

serious. Discrimmations are met by the 

negroes by the withdrawal upon their own resources in- 
stead of by active resentment. There has never been a 
lynching in the city and only one in the county, which was 
universally condemned by the better element of white 
citizens. Mr. Holloway writes, " There seems to be a 
growing conviction among both races that not all negroes 
are bad and that not all white men are good. There are 
evidences on every hand that good white people are lending 
a helping hand to the good negro in his efforts to rise, 
and the negro in turn is striving to make good his citizen- 
ship in the community where his rights are so secure and 
his opportunities so numerous." 

The whole story means that the negroes of Thomasville 
constitute a fairly typical American group. If they do 
not quite reach it, they at least closely approximate the 
national average of attainment. Their deficiencies are 
mere backwardness, not abnormal or unwholesome. They 
are practising a relatively complete group economy, yet 
without bitterness or practical antagonism to or from the 
dominant white population. From every reasonable human 
standpoint the black citizens of this typical city have made 
good. 



[96] 



THE SIFTING OF THE SOUTH 



APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III 
TABLE I 

OCCUPATIONS (professional) 

Physicians 2 

Pharmacist 1 

Dentist 1 

Chiropodists 2 

Graduate Nurses 2 

Graduate Hair Dresser 1 

Preachers 15 

Teachers (male) 5 

Teachers (female) 30 

Civil Service 5 

Rural Free Delivery 3 

Government Service 1 

Insurance 9 

Editors 2 

Musician 1 

TABLE n 

OCCUPATIONS (industrial) 

Licensed Contractors 4 

Carpenters, first-class (Union-men) 20 

Brick Masons, first-class (Union-men) 18 

Plasterers 11 

Painters 6 

Tinners and Plumbers 4 

Skilled Mechanists 2 

Pressman 1 

"Wheelwrights 2 

Blacksmiths 4 

Bakers 2 

Paper-hangers 2 

Carriage Painter 1 

7 foT] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 



TABLE m 

NEGRO BUSINESS ENTERPRISES 



KINDS OF BUSINESS 



EACH 
VALUE 



MEN EM- 
PLOYED 



OCCUPY 

OWN 
PEOPERTY 



UP- 
TOWN 



SUB- 
URBS 



1 

1 

2 
4 
15 
1 
1 
1 
6 
1 
3 
1 
3 
1 



Drugstore 

Grocery 

Groceries 

Groceries 

Groceries 

Undertaker .... 
Harness shop . . . 

Tailor 

Barber Shops . . . 

Hotel 

Pressing Clubs . . 

Butcher 

First-class restaurant 
Dairy 



$4000 

3000 

2000 

500 

2000 
300 
200 



250 



300 



2 
12 
3 
7 
3 



15 
1 



10-11 



4 

2 
10 



2-8 

2 
3-5 

1 



15 
I 



[98] 



IV. THE SIFTING OF SOUTHERN 
SENTIMENT 

I. SIFTING THE HEARTS OF MEN 

HOW shall a dominant social group respond to the 
partial sifting of any backward population in its 
midst? How shall it treat the emerged minority 
of such a backward population which approximates its 
own normative standards? 

The backward group simply cannot be treated according 
to any single policy ; for its members are not alike, and its 
extremes lie far apart. This necessitates discriminative 
changes in the social policy of the dominant group. We 
found the Thomasville (Ga.) negro, for example, showing 
marked differentiation, physical, social, and moral, accord- 
ing to which segregation was progressing within the race. 
Shall the responsible, property owning, home making 
negro be treated as the transient, tenant, and pauper 
class? Manifestly not. But this introduces new com- 
plexity into the race problem ; indeed, it raises the whole 
group of modern social problems. This the South vaguely 
feels and variously acknowledges. For the first time it is 
awake to the varying intellectual and moral moods of the 
age. 

The hearts of men are being sifted for practical re- 
sponses to the changing facts. Underneath the super- 
ficial unanimity of Southern sentiment surge currents of 
perplexing variety. 



99 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 



Border States vs. Lower South 

The general causes of these varying attitudes and prac- 
tises are easily traced. They are partly geographical. 

^ , . , The neero population, as we have shown, is 

Geographical i i- -i i ^ i 

Causes of by no means evenly distributed throughout 

Variation in the South. In the border states where his 
n imen numbers are proportionately few, race pres- 

sure is less acute than in the lower South where he is felt 
to threaten white civilization by the sheer weight of num- 
bers. In Lexington, Kentucky, for example, the coopera- 
tion of colored citizens was especially invited in recent 
movements for civic betterment. They were invited to 
public gatherings, announcement of which was made in 
the negro schools. As a result members of that race have 
been frequent prize winners in competitions for the neatest 
home garden or the best kept lawn. Louisville supports 
a public high school for negroes, in which the classics are 
taught. This public institution has been probably the 
chief feeder of Fisk University. Indeed almost the only 
decently sustained public secondary schools for negroes 
in the South are in these states. Nearly two-thirds of all 
pupils in public colored high schools are in the five border 
states and Texas. The other eight combined enroll but 
a trifle more than eleven hundred.^ The recent attack upon 
the negro's franchise rights has been less violent in these 
states. North Carolina, for example, refused to extend 
the time limit of the " grandfather clause " for the benefit 
of the white in the very year that Georgia and Mississippi 
were planning the complete disfranchisement of the negro. 
Both North Carolina and Tennessee have with Kentucky 
been carried by the Republican party in recent years and 

1 Report of Com. of Education, 1906, vol. 2, p. 1151. 
__ 



THE SIFTING OF SOUTHERN SENTIMENT 

are by many regarded as among the permanently doubtful 
states of the near future. Jim Crow regulations, while 
not absent from the border states, are not carried out in 
their more rigorous detail. In other words, these states 
tend rather to treat the negro as part of the general popu- 
lation, as the North does, than to make him a separate 
class. 

Old South vs. Southwest 

There are clearly marked differences in the race situa- 
tion between the old slavery regions and those settled since 
The Negro as the war. On soil never stained by the sweat 
Pioneer and blood of the slave, where men of both 

races have pioneered together, the inevitable democracy 
of the frontier has modified race contacts. The Texas and 
Oklahoma negro clearly shows a certain initiative and re- 
sourcefulness and an independence of spirit which are the 
marks of the West rather than the South. It is a proverb 
of the mission schools that elsewhere the negro boy will 
take a whipping from a white teacher more graciously than 
from one of his own race. He has been used to white 
whippings. In the West it is not so, and he resents them. 
There the negro teacher has an advantage in discipline. 
Within a few years a negro has been elected by a majority 
of white votes to the Texas legislature.^ Public provision 
for the schooling of the race in these Western states tends 
to be equable and ample, and to include high schools. On 
the other hand the husthng Westerner is less patient with 
the negro's deficiencies than is the easy-going Southerner. 
The West puts him under sterner tests of fitness for eco- 
nomic competition. 

• See Smith, " Village Improvement," etc.. The Outlook, Mar. 31, 1900. 

fioTl 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 



Aristocrat vs. Poor White 

Other divergence of practises have an historical expla- 
nation. The former slaveholder and his children gencr- 
„. . ally put a far higher estimate upon negro 

Causes of capacity and social usefulness than do the 

Variations in descendants of the poor whites. The former 
en imen knows that slave energy and intelligence, as 

well as slave muscle, conducted many an old plantation. 
He has intimate personal ties linking him to the freedman. 
He appreciates the virtues of the negro, depends upon his 
services and " likes to have him 'round." He continues 
largely his sense of responsibility for the negro in need. 
In hunger, sickness, grief, and struggle, the old-time 
Southerner has been the negro's most frequent friend, and 
has shown toward him a million kindnesses to every one 
which has come from the long-distance philanthropy of the 
North. And he takes his own superiority so much for 
granted that he feels no need of asserting it aggressively. 

The white masses, on the other hand, hate the negro, who 
anciently shared his master's contempt for them as a land- 
Racial Bitter- ^^^^ class. Now the tables are turned, and 
ness of "Poor the poor whites of former days are in politi- 
Whites g^l power throughout almost the entire 

South. Tillman, Vardaman, and Jeff Davis of Arkansas 
are their prophets. Theirs are the policies which are 
now drawing the color-line more rigidly and are increas- 
ingly narrowing political privileges by law. The man 
who cannot get his superiority taken for granted feels 
that he must shake his fist in the negro's face and vocifer- 
ate, " He's got to respect my color." 

The conflicting practises of these two classes are every- 
where apparent throughout the South. The daughter of 

[102] 



THE SIFTING OF SOUTHERN SENTIMENT 



the " first family " may greet her colored maid with a kiss 
in the sight of the whole city. Athens, the seat of the 
State University of Georgia — a state which generally is 
degrading its colored schools — supports a negro high 
school with a curriculum identical with that of the white, 
including Latin. The Northern critic of Tillman will find 
nothing to add to what the Southern conservative journals 
say about him. Witness the following from the leading 
paper of South Carolina, The Columbia State: 

If there is more ill feeling between the races in 
South Carolina than there was ten years ago, those 
that have done most to create ill feeling and suspicion 
are responsible, and Tillman is chief of that class. 

The negroes have in ten years made no opposition, 
offered no resistance to the white man's absolute con- 
trol of every department of government. None ex- 
cept Tillman fears that they will ever attempt to 
dominate in the South. But Tillman's speeches and 
Tom Dixon's play, " The Clansman," are breeders of 
race hatred. They incite the more ignorant and 
vicious of both races to greater antagonism. That 
real trouble has not resulted is that intelligent public 
sentiment condemns the agitation. 

John Sharp WilHams says that ninety out of a hun- 
dred negroes are peaceable, law-abiding, and work. 
Is it unnatural that these should feel aggrieved and 
discouraged when classed, by men having the ear of 
the country, with vagrants, thieves, and ravishers.? 
Injustice is certain to beget animosity. Do the people 
of the South in town or country court animosity be- 
tween the races.'' 

From the beginning the best friends and helpers of 
NortheiTi missionary enterprise in the South have been 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

men of such views, the choice representatives of its old 
regime, its " high men." The Southern churches most 
faithful to the negro's spiritual interest have been those 
reputed most aristocratic. To this day the Episcopal 
Church refuses to recognize the ecclesiastical segregation 
of the races. In conservative Charleston the colored 
patron may still occupy a seat anywhere in a street car 
if he gets it first. It is in the new cities developed by 
Northern capital and dominated by the laboring class 
that the color-line becomes brutally aggressive. I am 
personally familiar with a group of communities in the 
Southwest, where for years no negro has been allowed to 
stay over night: without exception they are railroad or 
mining centers or else Northern settlements. 

This familiarity and liking between the old-time South- 
erner and the negro has its bad side, in that it is the con- 
Systematic tinning ground of permanent and systematic 
Miscegenation but illicit unions between white men and 
colored women. In the more conservative communities 
concubinage is still frequent. Of more than one great 
planter have I heard it said, " Why, he has children in 
every cabin on the place." Within a few years a distin- 
guished Charlestonian — a member of the school board — 
died and was buried from the home of the negro mother 
of his children. It was the only domicile he had. The 
children were called out of the mission school to attend 
his death-bed, but the white schools closed for his funeral. 
The mission schools have hundreds of cases annually where 
white men recognize their responsibility for the children of 
their negro families and pay their educational bills. Not 
infrequently they send letters full of parental concern 
and admonition. Such relations are perfectly well known 

and widely condoned, the possession of a colored family 

__ 



THE SIFTING OF SOUTHERN SENTIMENT 

often being no bar to honorable church-membership nor 
frequently to subsequent marriage into the best white 
families. 

The one alien widely scattered throughout the South 
is the Jew. He lacks something of the Anglo-Saxon's 
RaceMbcture strong race feeling and, partly for commer- 
with Semite cial reasons, often draws the color-line 
and Latin loosely. In a Mississippi negro school of 

three hundred pupils I found by actual count that a full 
tenth were manifestly of Hebrew blood. In regions settled 
by the Latin races too — notably New Orleans — race 
mixture has gone further than in the Anglo-Saxon South. 
The fear that Italian and other immigration from the 
South of Europe would lead to still more excessive admix- 
ture is one of the deepest grounds of Southern dread of 
their coming. In Charleston and New Orleans I have 
even seen Chinese negroes. 

Now animosity and dislike between the masses of both 
races is a bar to such miscegenation, and thus has its 
useful side. It makes rude place for those ideals of race 
purity which may come to have personal sanction and 
moral meaning both for negro and white. The clergy and 
press are plucking up new courage for bold speech on this 
matter. Mr. Ray Stannard Baker tells me that his recent 
searching treatment of sex relations between the races ^ 
has brought him commendation, especially from Southern 
correspondents. Thus though the stream of illicit blood 
mixture flows steadily on, it Is somewhat checked by these 
new eddies and cross currents. 

In indiscriminate bounty, too, and his lax patience with 
inefficient labor, the tender mercies of the old-time South- 
erner have been cruel to the negro. After all, the sterner 
' See Following the Color-Line, p. 164 ff. 

fiosl 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

demands of the new South are more honorable to man- 
hood. The hurhng of the race back on itself by means 
The Color- °^ ^^^ tightly drawn color-line has taught it 

line and the that great lesson of self-help. Within his own 

Lesson of Self- people the negro has made hopeful progress 
^ in capacity for leadership. He is beginning 

to catch the knack of cooperation and to learn the art of 
group strength, which, rather than individual capacity, is 
the secret of white race superiority. The plebeian South 
has imposed these tests upon him in no pedagogical spirit. 
In a thousand ways its demands are unequal, arbitrary, 
and too severe, yet the wrath of men still praises God. 
Each of the contradictory class policies toward the negro 
is contributing good as well as evil to the race problem. 

Em'ployer vs. Competitor 

These class attitudes are crossed and complicated by 
others of economic origin. It is the general law that race 
Bitterness on a antagonism is bitterest between people on a 
Common Com- common competitive level. The present land- 
petitive Level holder or employer not only frequently car- 
ries over the kindly spirit of the old master class, but he 
naturally regards the negro as an economic asset from 
which he derives profit. On the contrary, the white laborer 
frequently covets the negro's job on the farm or in the 
factory. He envies his rapidly acquired prosperity ; or 
hates him as an industrial disturber and strike breaker. 
It has been frequently noted that the relations of the races 
are most amicable in the blackest belts where the white 
laboring class is totally absent. The political and social 
attitude of the poor whites described in the previous sec- 
tion has an historical origin. Its chief and growing root 

— - 



THE SIFTING OF SOUTHERN SENTIMENT 

of bitterness is the actual progress of the negro and his 
new importance as an economic factor receiving a coveted 
share of the wealth of the South. And this economic 
jealousy will grow tenser as the ambitions of either race 
are quickened. 

Industrial Employer vs. Planter 

There are also different attitudes within the master 

classes. A great struggle for labor is going on between 

^ ^.^. the mine and factory and the Southern farm. 

Competition . . . » 

between Em- The negro is a new industrial factor. His 

ployers for employer likes him because he is an able- 

egro a or bodied and good-natured laborer to whom 
the color-line permits the payment of less than current 
■wages, and who can frequently be played against the labor 
unions. The negro laborer was defended by an over- 
whelming majority of speakers at the great Immigration 
Congress at Nashville as superior to any class of immi- 
grants now available in America. Contractor Oliver de- 
clared that he could take the chain-gangs of the South and 
build the Panama Canal. The negro in agriculture on the 
other hand is an old factor. Now that he has heard the 
call of the city he demands more than the former agri- 
cultural wage. The demand for him in industry has seri- 
ously disturbed agricultural conditions. The planter re- 
sents this and tries to fix him to the soil by securing his 
perpetual ignorance, by intimidation and violence and 
repressive law; or else by unwilling, childish concessions, 
— extra holidays, a mule to ride, whisky — poor substi- 
tutes for the real betterment of rural conditions. Thus 
the feud between industry and agriculture over the negro 

is very deep and with the growth of Southern cities tends 

-— 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

to merge into a permanent difference of opinion and policy 
between the urban and rural districts. Already it has 
taken deep hold of politics. 

Business Interests vs. Politician 

The money-making element in the South to-day strongly 
desires racial peace. It wants to exploit the natural and 
human resources of its section for its own 
maker's profit undisturbed by sentimental consider- 

Denunciation ations of any sort. Its class-consciousness 
^ "^^ subdues its race-consciousness. For its pur- 

pose the white laborer frequently is inferior 
to the colored and gets no superior treatment. As the 
manager of a Louisiana sugar plantation put it to me, 
" The white man who works down here is the same as the 
nigger." 

On the contrary, the average politician gets office in the 
South by appealing to the race prejudice of the poor 
white who holds the power of the ballot. Negrophobia is 
his chief stock in trade. The ordinary political campaign 
is a contest to see who can best abuse the race. Fre- 
quently the political bark is worse than its bite, but 
generally the animosity stirred by it leads to some new 
anti-negro measure or other. The man of practical com- 
mercial interest detects the selfishness and insincerity of all 
this and resents the preoccupation of the South by it to 
the detriment of its material progress. One finds therefore 
the meetings of manufacturers' or commercial clubs loud 
with the denunciation of the " demagogue " as a chief dis- 
turber of Israel. Undoubtedly he has done much to ag- 
gravate and distort the race situation. 

Yet the case has another side; for what is politics but 

— - 



THE SIFTING OF SOUTHERN SENTIMENT 

the natural and inevitable arena for the expression of the 
aspirations and struggles of any unprivileged group in 
p J-,. ., a democracy? The poor white himself is 

Inevitable such a struggler against the ancient aristo- 

Arena of Race cratic organization of Southern society. He 
^^ has virtually won his victory, but has not 

yet got his eyes clear of the dust of battle, and in its 
brutal heat does not consider that it is unworthy to rise 
by crowding another class down. Yet his example to the 
negro to-day is wiser than the conciliatory counsel and 
somewhat faint praise of the employing and commercial 
classes. Class struggle must get into politics. It is futile 
to forbid it. The negro cannot long be kept out. Till- 
man's " Organize ! organize ! " applies to him, too. The 
poor white marks his upward struggle by asserting his 
superiority to the negro, but for all that he is fighting a 
common battle for democracy. Humanity, it seems, must 
go forward by detachments and the unprivileged Anglo- 
Saxon blazes the way for all. 

Man vs. Woman 

Women generally draw the color-line tighter than men. 
Perhaps one sex is temperamentally given to applying its 
Q , p J convictions more rigidly than the other. In 
Social Inter- the South women have abundant motives 
course for- for rigidity, as appeared in the discussion 

of miscegenation. At any rate the relations 
between white and colored men, in matters which do not 
involve the other sex, are surprisingly unrestrained and 
often intimate. All sorts of business dealings are every- 
where recognized, and " business " frequently is made to 
cover the comradeship of minds and hearts in other com- 

" [Too] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

mon interests. I have known a Southern gentleman who 
by preference frequently spends the evenings in his office 
in conversation with a colored friend. This companion- 
ship is manifestly more congenial than those of the society 
functions from which he gladly escapes. It is not called 
" social equality," but it goes deeper than much that is. 
In accordance with this tendency to limit the ban to formal 
social intercourse, I have heard a white Federal office-holder 
try to explain away the objectionable features of the fa- 
mous White House luncheon. According to his version 
it occurred not in the White House proper but in the execu- 
tive offices. Mr. Washington happened to be calling when 
the President's luncheon time came. Mr. Roosevelt ac- 
cordingly sent out for two trays of food. The two ate 
simultaneously, but not at the same table ! Now thousands 
of Southern working men and farmers daily sit on curbs 
or in fence corners and dine out of dinner-pails along with 
their negro fellow workers. The Washington incident was 
held to be a parallel case having no social implications. 

The Rational vs. the Passionate 

These are the familiar temperamental classes of any 
population, and the race issue has emphasized their diver- 
Tempera- gence in the South. To the Northern 
mental Classes stranger Southerners naturally fall into two 
classes — those who can discuss the negro rationally and 
those who cannot. The latter is much the larger class. 
An habitual tendency to look backward and an abnormal 
tension of mind, frequently bordering on hysteria, has char- 
acterized the popular attitude on this matter. It has been 
a prolonged case of nerves. Yet the other class is surely 

growing. With the cooling of passion and the fresh prac- 

-_ 



THE SIFTING OF SOUTHERN SENTIMENT 

tical achievements of the South a new type of leader is 
emerging. 

He is marked by a certain scientific mindedness in 
intellectual approach and mental habit. I mean by 
the scientific minded man, one who observes closely, 
who has mental patience, who thinks with his brain 
and not with his emotions, who is satisfied with the 
whole truth and nothing less. His reverence is for 
the past, but it is tempered with the common-sense 
patriotism which gives him enthusiasm for the future. 
He is at home in the republic, and a sense of mastery 
of the methods of his age, and perception of his kin- 
ship to all the world, have freed his energies and 
widened his vision. He has not attained wholly the 
ideal mental condition. He would be rather lonesome 
in America, if he had reached it; but he is moving 
that way.^ 

This attitude is sometimes associated and sometimes con- 
fused with those preoccupations of the commercial spirit 
which cares little for any struggle for ideals. Yet it is 
itself essentially founded on ideals and supported by 
patient faith that time will show the right. Its broadest 
representatives confess its religious basis. 

" Good " vs. Good 

It is not fair to judge the South by those whom It 
already recognizes and repudiates as bad. The moral 
Conscience tragedy of the race situation is rather that 

draws the the conscience of the average good man is two- 

Color-Iine colored. This is always the case when a " su- 

perior " group of population erects social barriers against 

» Alderman, "The Growing South," The World's Work, June, 1908, 
p. 10382. 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

an " inferior " one ; it is doubly serious when the inferior 
group also belongs to another and a despised race. A 
double moral standard is then inevitable. Right becomes 
one thing within and another without the racial pale. 
Sanctions which protect the members of one class fail for 
the other. 

Thus in the South " Thou shalt not kill," " Thou shalt 
not commit adultery," " Thou shalt not steal," " Thou 
shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor," mean 
one thing as between white and white and another as be- 
tween white and black. The negro's misdemeanors become 
crimes ; the white's crimes shrink into misdemeanors. Con- 
science itself fails to operate equally as between the races. 
Worst of all, perhaps, the boasted Anglo-Saxon sense 
of fair play is largely obliterated by race prejudice. 
Blunting of Bryce notes that 
Characteristic 

Anglo-Saxon Even between civilized peoples, such as 

Vi^^u^s Germans and Russians, or Spaniards and 

Frenchmen, there is a disposition to be unduly an- 
noyed by traits and habits which are not so much 
culpable in themselves as distasteful to men con- 
structed on different lines. This sense of annoyance 
is naturally more intense toward a race so widely re- 
moved from the modern European as the Kafirs are. 
Whoever has traveled among people of a race greatly 
weaker than his own must have sometimes been con- 
scious of an impatience or irritation which arises when 
the native fails to understand or neglects to obey the 
command given. The sense of his superior intelli- 
gence and energy of will produces in the European 
a sort of tyrannous spirit, which will not condescend 
to argue with the native, but overbears him by sheer 
force, and is prone to resort to physical coercion. 
Even just men, who have the deepest theoretical re- 

[in] 



THE SIFTING OF SOUTHERN SENTIMENT 

spect for human rights are apt to be carried away 
by the consciousness of superior strength, and to 
become despotic if not harsh.^ 

President Alderman claims that the South's dealings 
with the negro since the war have shown " a juster and 
larger policy than was ever before pursued by higher 
groups toward backward and lower groups in any civiliza- 
tion." This may be true. The fact remains that the 
South in the large has treated the negro just as other 
superior groups have treated their alleged inferiors, 
namely, according to a distinct and lower moral code than 
pertains between equals. Only the aggressive and vital 
goodness of a small minority has been able to make its 
moral practises universalistic and democratic. 

I recall once being in conversation with a courteous 
gentleman on a Florida railway platform. A careless 
negro driver threw a horse in crossing the track. Instantly 
the courteous gentleman became a raging fiend. " If that 
was my horse I 'd get a revolver and beat that nigger 
within an inch of his life, and if he resisted I 'd shoot him." 
Note the moral splendor of it ! He would take bodily ven- 
geance for a casual error. The law calls that criminal as- 
sault. He would use the advantage of his weapon against 
an unarmed man. Anglo-Saxon instincts call that contempt- 
ible cowardice. He would kill the negro if he resisted. The 
Ten Commandments call that murder. Yet this is not an 
exceptional incident. It represents the attitude of thou- 
sands of Southern whites, particularly of the younger gen- 
eration. That it allows and perpetuates such moral con- 
tradictions in the lives of average good men is probably the 
most disastrous thing about the Southern racial policy. 

* Bryce, Impressions of South Africa, p. 442. 
8 [113] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 



" The Negro a Beast " vs. " Our Brother in Black " 

These divergent attitudes and practises naturally jfind 

formulation and justification in various theoretical esti- 

-.. . mates of the negro and the ultimate meaning 

Divergent . . ° '=' 

Views of of his existence. Some seven years ago an 

Negro agent brought a book to my door entitled 

Capacity „ r^j^^ "^egvo a Beast." Since then I have 

found it from Virginia to Texas. It is a strange mixture 
of Darwinism and Biblical arguments in justification of 
the most brutal racial antipathy. During the opening 
years of the twentieth century it has become the Scripture 
of tens of thousands of poor whites, and its doctrine is 
maintained with an appalling stubbornness and persistence. 
Of course this is not the traditional, nor is it by any means 
the dominant, Southern view of the negro. The com- 
moner thought is that he is a man, but radically inferior to 
the white in certain crucial capacities, especially those for 
practical achievement and for ideal aspiration and fel- 
lowship. For the higher realms of culture, for the more 
refined contacts of human intercourse and for political 
authority he is held to be naturally unfit. 

Probably few Southerners could be found willing to 
confess so favorable an estimate of negro racial capacity 
as that proclaimed by the typical Northern idealist and 
now defended by eminently respectable sociological author- 
ity. Nevertheless there is a group of men of commanding 
influence whose point of emphasis makes their statement 
of Southern doctrine take a radically new sound and sig- 
nificance. Whatever their conception of the negro's natu- 
ral deficiencies, in respect to the things xchich count for 
most they assert his fitness for full participation in the 
highest life of man. He is religiously capable ; his Chris- 

[nJ] 



THE SIFTING OF SOUTHERN SENTIMENT 

tian experience entitles him to Christian fellowship. This 
is the true clue to any present or future policy toward him. 
Bishop Bratten puts it thus : " The negro is capable of 
development to a point whose limit I have not yet discov- 
ered " ; while the late Bishop Galloway said, " As the 
negro is a man and a brother, embraced in the divine 
scheme of human redemption, we cannot exclude him from 
any of the privileges and agencies that may fit him for 
service in the Kingdom of God." Just because they are so 
sound on the main issue, it is possible for men of such 
views to accede to the popular practises of their section 
in non-essentials Hke formal racial recognition. Their 
essential rightness of spirit should be recognized — and is 
— both by negroes and their less hampered Northern 
friends. Dr. Du Bois certainly does not doubt that Bishop 
Galloway accorded him the full rights of spiritual man- 
hood, freely and without condescension, and that the bishop 
showed it beyond peradventure — whatever his habits as 
to eating with negroes. No essential barrier separates 
the men of different color or section who view the race 
situation from the standpoint of this common emphasis. 
Practically speaking, the emphasis is the doctrine. 

When all classifications are exhausted it remains to be 
said that the characteristic Southerner is full of surprising 
Individual and often charming inconsistencies. What- 

Exceptions ever his natural or theoretical attitude his 

color-line weaves itself into complex patterns which are the 
despair of the alien. I recall the perplexity of a Northern 
minister who had recently taken a Southern church. 
" They tell me," he complained, " that I must n't shake 
hands with a negro lest I lose caste; yet here comes 
Dr. B from Charleston and shakes hands with a col- 
ored woman in the middle of Main Street. He pinches her 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

baby's cheeks and talks with her for ten minutes, and I 
don't understand it." Indeed it is just those aliens who 
lack the inner sense of fitness in interracial conduct who 
are most apt to fall back upon a rigid observance of an 
arbitrary code. Because they have no other guide to con- 
duct, the " spoiled Yankee " and the poor white draw the 
color-line the tighter. 

II. THE COLOR-LINE 

We have persisted through the tedious story of how geo- 
graphical, historical, economic, and vocational differences 
The Conven- enter into the race situation ; how sex, char- 
tional Creed of acter, and theory make a difference in the 
the South practical attitudes of Southerners toward the 

negro. This was necessary because it is loudly proclaimed 
that the South is absolutely unanimous on this subject. 
Nothing could be further from the truth. There is a con- 
ventional creed to which most Southerners subscribe. No 
legitimate blood mixture of the races is to be tolerated. 
There is to be complete non-intercourse between them in 
the ideal interests of life. In the home, the church, the 
school, which are the central shrines of these ideal inter- 
ests, they are to remain separate. To enforce these sepa- 
rations political power must remain in the hands of the 
whites. 

The vast practical authority of this creed is not to be 
denied. It makes an immense psychological impression on 
both races. 

On the one hand there is that wide-spread loss of the 
The Negro's white man's keener sense of justice and social 
Subjective purity in the presence of an inferior popu- 

Handicap lation, which has already been illustrated; 

on the other, the negro's " resultant self-contempt and 



THE SIFTING OF SOUTHERN SENTIMENT 

despair. In the presence of the arrogant white, flaunting 
insultingly his superior powers, the despised blacks de- 
generate into baser beings than they would otherwise be- 
come. ' Dirt in his eyes, they soon become as dirt in their 
own.' And they become positively enfeebled by their 
consciousness of inferiority." ^ This description of the 
South African situation absolutely fits our own color-line. 
Its existence is an insidious attack upon the foundations 
of manhood in the negro man and of virtue in the negro 
woman. For in spite of all denials a good part of the 
South's policy is not a single-hearted attempt at racial 
separation for the protection of white civilization, but a 
deliberate purpose to humiliate the negro. It is aimed all 
too accurately at his self-respect. Over against this the 
South sometimes pleads the negro's narrower economic 
opportunity in the North — as though the two things 
were comparable ! " We will not play with him," it says ; 
" you will not work with him." But man does not live by 
bread alone. It is just the refusal of fellowship in the 
ideal interests of life — symbolized by the social color-line 
— which is the bitterness of the negro's cup. The denial 
of equality in these spheres chokes the very breath of 
freedom and moral life. That it has not strangled it alto- 
gether; that indeed the negro's race pride has shown 
rapid and hopeful increase is due partly to his encourage- 
ment by individual Southerners, but chiefly to the fact that 
he knew that a great section of the nation was backing 
his struggle as a freeman. However Utopian its faith and 
practically remote its help, it has been an immeasurable 
reenforcement of the negro's inner resources that the North 
believed in him — that Abraham Lincoln's picture was 
looking down from the dark walls of his hundred thousand 
^ Alston, White Man's Work in Asia and Africa, p. 88. 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

cabins. The backing of the moral sentiment of the nation's 
idealists is psychologically crucial ; and never more so than 
now. 

Again, the unequal dealing of the state between the 
races in practical matters — a difference everywhere con- 
fessed and excused — puts an almost impos- 
Ihe Negro s sible handicap on the negro. Apart from all 
Handicap atrocities and exceptionally oppressive deal- 

ings — in the whole realm of social better- 
ment, the color-line condemns the negro to take the leav- 
ings. What disadvantage has the negro? Much every 
way ; chiefly perhaps in sewers and sidewalks ; in schools 
and security. His health is socially penalized by a com- 
parative and sometimes absolute lack of sanitary provision 
for him. His schools are " good enough for a nigger." 
His property and his life suffer a higher risk than that of 
the average white citizen. This goes deeper than the 
withholding of specially granted franchise privileges ; it 
limits common justice. Now the sociologist teaches us 
that in a democratic state the little more and the little less 
of opportunity, working out their results through long 
periods, produce the vastest social changes.^ The ultimate 
result of the Southerner's policy cannot but be fatal to 
millions of American negroes who might otherwise have 
been saved to the nation. These are matters, too, which 
the state alone can control. Private philanthropy, near 
or remote, is virtually helpless. Absolutely the only 
ground of hope for him is the conviction that the South's 
better spirit of justice and humanity will come to the 
kingdom in time to save him. 

Yet no creed is so practically significant as the behavior 
of those who hold it. In spite of the impressive sentimental 
* Ross, Foundation of Sociology, p. 202. 

[ns] 



THE SIFTING OF SOUTHERN SENTIMENT 

unity of the South, the general race situation is actually 
dominated by profound and far-reaching differences in its 
A Margin of conduct which our previous discussion has 
Opportunity discovered. Here and there exceptions to 
the creed have become the local or individual rule ; whole 
classes and areas have signally modified it ; while almost 
everywhere it is so tempered in daily application as to 
leave wide margins of opportunity not admitted on the 
face of it. 



in. CLUES TO PROPHECY 

These differences of conduct, moreover, are the working 
out of certain large tendencies which in turn are reliable 
clues to prophecy. Of course the omens are not all agreed. 
It would be at variance with human experience if they were. 
Indeed some of them are distinctively adverse to the hope 
of interracial prosperity and peace, and indicate that in 
many respects the situation will be worse before it is 
better. 

On the one hand, time is rapidly sundering the kindlier 
ties brought over from the old regime and the good under- 
Seoregation standing based upon the past is dying out. 
estranges the Physical segregation and mental estrange- 
"^^^® ment will certainly go further. Both races 

will develop an even more extreme measure of irritability 
and touchiness. 

Over against this evil tendency stands the prospect that 
national ideals will be more and more adequately inter- 
But creates a preted to the negro masses by their own 
Demand for leaders. The negro's native capacity, for 
Negro Leaders loyalty and his splendid patriotism may then 
be relied on. In spite of the color-line he may still share 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

the inspirations and ideals of our best life through the 
intermediation of the exceptional minority of his race. 
We have noted a new willingness in the South to recognize 
the opportunity and responsibility of the exceptional 
negro and so to cooperate with him for social peace as to 
preserve his racial pride and self-respect. No social class 
nor struggling race " can reach equality with other classes 
and races until its leaders can meet theirs on equal terms." 
In all its substantial aspects this is being admitted. White 
men of standing are associated with negroes on the Jeanes 
Board and as trustees of many colored schools. The ex- 
ceptional negro is widely accorded exceptional treatment, 
and his representative character is felt by his race. Re- 
cently a Southern guest protested at the presence of Booker 
Washington at the Belmont Hotel Cafe in New York. 
Reporters rushed to interview the head waiter. " No," he 
said, " negroes are not allowed to dine here, but with Mr. 
Washington it is different." This particular exception is 
not met with in the South, but others of more practical 
importance are. After all, the children of the mind are 
more important than the children of the body, as old 
Plato said. Thus the psychical assimilation of the negro 
to the national type Is hopefully possible. By the mainte- 
nance of the moral and spiritual contacts of the races at 
the top, the masses need not fail of the better incentives 
of American life. Their hope and self-respect may feed 
on the recognition and privileges accorded to the excep- 
tional few. 

The negro must expect a waning of the favor of the 
employing classes just so far as he ceases as a race to be 
tractable under industrial exploitation. He has already 
shown remarkable mobility as a laborer and a capacity 
for quick response to economic opportunity. He has 

[1201 



THE SIFTING OF SOUTHERN SENTIMENT 



shown some hopeful evidence of capacity for cooperation 
and organization. In other words, he gives evidence of 
Economic De- two of the chief economic virtues. It is just 
bseSe^o* his previous lack of these which has endeared 
the Employer's ^im to the employer. Perhaps he has a per- 
Favor manent temperamental advantage in his char- 

acteristic good nature, and undoubtedly his superior adap- 
tability to the cHmate of the lower and hotter regions of 
the South gives him a certain permanent advantage over 
white labor. Nevertheless, his newly learned virtues will 
lead the employer to seek to displace him with an alien 
labor force, helpless through its lack of economic experi- 
ence. This means bitter competition between the negro 
and the newly awakened white masses of the South. Exten- 
sive foreign immigration, though not immediately prob- 
able, must be expected in the long run. The undeveloped 
areas of the lower South will become industrialized, and 
the whole labor problem reach the acute stage to which it 
has come in all the more progressive sections of civilization. 
Hitherto the negro has had a practical monopoly as a 
laborer in the South. President Alderman is now un- 
doubtedly right in saying that " he is yet to undergo the 
fiercest trials that come to backward races striving to 
forge to the front in an old civihzation." 

What will be the outcome of this sterner competition? 
It seems inevitable that in the long run the negro must 
be recognized and enlisted on the side of labor. 

As the class struggle proceeds, new lines will be drawn 
But will force which will include the negro on the side of 
the White the white masses. They will have to make 

Laborer to imite common cause with him. They must or lose 
their battle. It will be easier than in the case 
of any other ahen race; for the negro already approxi- 

' fiiTl 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

mates to the current standard of living of his section. He 
spends freely, like a good American, and readily expands 
his scale of wants. The chief economic difficulty to his in- 
clusion on the side of labor is thus absent. When the gap 
between diverse standards of living is once surmounted, 
racial animosities have repeatedly given way before the 
mighty unifying force of class consciousness. Labor or- 
g"anization has been one of the most important assimilative 
agencies in American life and, in spite of its errors, a chief 
adjunct of democracy. Already it has marshaled thou- 
sands across the color-line. Socialism, too, has undertaken 
a distinct propaganda among negroes. I do not anticipate 
great practical results from it, but it shows how the wind 
blows. Thus the vastest movement of Southern civiliza- 
tion — the struggle of the white masses for equal oppor- 
tunity, merges with the world-wide cause of the unprivi- 
leged. Sooner or later it will discover that it must in- 
clude the negro as well.^ 

The further curtailment of negro political privileges in 
the South is to be expected. From the standpoint of white 
P If 1 P ■ ■- supremacy he is tenfold more dangerous now 
leges will be that he has acquired education and property. 
Further now that he has developed race conscience, 

competent leadership and organs of public 
opinion, than when he was first enfranchised. The cry is 
now widely raised that the older disqualifying legislation 
does not go far enough. For many years Georgia thought 
the negro sufficiently out of politics through moral suasion 
and the poll-tax requirement ; but Hoke Smith became 
governor on the plea that legal disfranchisement was still 
necessary. Mr. Baker quotes an argument from the editor 
of the Huntsville, Alabama, Tribune. 

' Cf. Commons, Races and Immigrants in America, p. 115. 

[122] 



THE SIFTING OF SOUTHERN SENTIMENT 

We thought (in 1901, when the new Alabama Con- 
stitution disfranchising the negro was under discus- 
sion), as we do now, that the menace to peace, the 
danger to society and white supremacy was not in the 
ilHterate negro, but in the upper branches of negro 
society, the educated, the man who after ascertaining 
his political rights, forced the way to assert them. 

He continues: 

We, the Southern people, entertain no prejudice 
toward the ignorant per se inoffensive negro. It is 
because we know him, and for him we entertain a 
compassion. But our blood boils when the educated 
negro asserts himself politically. We regard each 
assertion as an unfriendly encroachment upon our 
native superior rights, and a daredevil menace to our 
control of the affairs of the state. In this are we not 
speaking the truth? Does not every Southern Cau- 
casian " to the manor born " bear witness to this ver- 
sion? Hence we present that the way to dampen 
racial prejudice, avert the impending horrors, is to 
emasculate the negro politically, by repealing the 
fifteenth amendment of the Constitution of the United 
States. 

Now there is not the slightest likelihood that the 
fifteenth amendment will ever be repealed, yet there is a 
general desire throughout the nation to guard the suffrage 
more strictly, and under cover of this feehng the South 
will undoubtedly devise new legal barriers for the negro. 

Yet even on this point the tides do not all run in one 
direction. There are elements in Southern life which may 
yet feel the need of the negro's political assistance. Even 
in Georgia the argument has recently been heard that dis- 

[123] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

franchisement may go too fast; it may take the negro's 

well-known conservatism to defeat the destructive radical- 

rrn, XT 11 ism of the poor whites at the ballot-box. The 

The Negro will . • t • j. i i 

yet be Called industrialization of the upland South and the 

Back into decreasing proportion of negroes in it, al- 

^ '^^ ready result in franker political divisions 

within its borders along the lines of economic interests, 
and promises its final detachment from the lower South in 
national politics. There will yet be selfish efforts there to 
get the negro into politics and to use him as a balance of 
power as in the North. There are Southerners, too, who 
rest the political future of the negro on deeper theoretical 
and moral grounds. Witness ex-Congressman Fleming's 
notable address at the University of Georgia. He said, 
" Without some access to the ballot, present or prospec- 
tive, some participation in the government, no inferior 
race in an elective republic could long protect itself against 
reduction to slavery in many of its substantial forms." 
The present South is not wholly deaf to this appeal and 
time cannot fail to bring other recruits to its standard. 

With the increase of wealth and luxury comes a weak- 
ening of the democratic instincts and a new willingness to 
Plutocracv anticipate the existence of a permanently ser- 

adds New vile class in the Republic. We must frankly 

Burdens confess the fact that there are daily more 

people who want other human beings to be conveniences 
rather than men, and who are glad to use the race which 
traditionally bears the badge of servitude. In the South a 
new plutocratic version of social inequality puts rigidity 
and harshness into the color-line. One would indeed 
despair of his country if he saw this only ; if he could not 
discern in varied phases the progress of democracy, of 
which the unifying work of organized labor noted above is 

[124] 



THE SIFTING OF SOUTHERN SENTIMENT 



part. This movement is seen in the new interest in social 
questions, in the widespread awakening of social conscience 
and in manifold concrete reforms. So strong is its mo- 
mentum in the South that that section finds itself educating 
the negro, in apparent contradiction to its deepest racial 
convictions. The more democratic conceptions of the 
present day in regard to the family and social intercourse 
■R t • O t ^^^^ ^^^^ *^^^^ racial applications to-morrow, 

weighed by a Already the organized womanhood of the 
Widening South is showing great interest in social bet- 

Democracy terment. Movements like those of scientific 
charity, prison and sanitary reforms assume the solidarity 
of communities and ignore the color-line. The sphere of 
public activity constantly widens and brings the impersonal 
justice of the state more largely to bear; and these out- 
weigh the new burden of plutocracy added to old prejudice. 
Finally, the present moral crisis of the race question is 
certain to discover the apostasy of some professed ideal- 
The Apostasy '^^^^' Secure in the sense of the negroes im- 
of some mense practical handicap, and the conviction 

Idealists ^f j^js inferior capacity, there were some who 

encouraged him to hope and virtually said, " Of course if 
you ever prove yourself our equal we will then recognize 
you as such." Time has brought these men face to face 
with negro success and has called upon them to pay up the 
debt of their previous professions. A negro minority has 
emerged which by all the white men's tests has demon- 
strated its fitness for full participation in human privilege. 
How should it be treated? What if all negroes were 
Booker Washingtons? That this issue is actually upon the 
South, Thomas Nelson Page confesses in a recent notable 
article. His answer is, " If all negroes were Booker T. 
Washingtons the color-line must exist unrelaxed." To 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

moral diagnosis this looks curiously like what theologians 
have called a " sin against the light." It is a deliberate 
refusal to adjust conduct to admitted facts. 

But there is another side. On the whole the most en- 
couraging aspect of the situation is the driving of true 
The Separa- idealists into the open by this very moral 
tion of Sheep crisis and enforced separation of sheep and 
and Goats goats. There is " nothing covered that shall 

not be revealed " was first spoken as a word of confidence, 
and as such it is justified in this case. In the face of the 
rising tide of race animosity, of the growing bitterness of 
competition, of political self-seeking at the expense of the 
negro, of unworthy and cowardly willingness to surrender 
still further the fundamentals of democracy, the best 
men of the South simply cannot hold their peace. And they 
have not done so. The last five years have probably heard 
more brave and candid discussions of the race problem and 
seen more deliberate moral choices than the thirty-five 
previous. Thus the ultimate just solution of this vast 
issue was never so assured as now that conscience has ex- 
hausted its conventional excuses and is forced to meet the 
situation on ethical grounds. 

Of the ultimate happy ending of the race problem there 
is no more assurance than there is that democracy will 
succeed or that any portion of the human race will find a 
" golden harbor " ; but, also, no less. For the race prob- 
lem is simply a bit of the human problem with the same 
solution, if there is any. We feel the doubtful ebb and 
flow of the tide, but the strongest currents of the present 
are not so adverse as to deny to the brave man all he 
asks — a fighting chance. 



126] 



V. WHAT THE NEGRO HAS DONE 
FOR HIMSELF 

I. SUCCESS WITH A MINIMUM OF ASSISTANCE 

THEY will call this title question-begging who believe 
that the negro can do nothing for himself. That 
certain gains in the way of landownership, annual 
production of wealth, education, and organization are 
credited to him in the columns of the census is admitted. 
. .j^g It is explained, however, that these are not 

Negro's Gains proper race achievements, because made un- 
His Own ? ^er white stimulus. All the negro's substan- 

tial gains, it is said, have been compulsory. Necessity and 
the constant efforts of his neighbors have prodded him to 
work. For his worthy victories, thank the South. His 
showier achievements have been imitative, under artificial 
stimulus from his sentimental alHes. For his beatings of 
the air, thank the North. The negro himself thank for 
nothing, or if for anything, thank only the white blood 
in his veins. His progress in America is not genuinely 
his own. The following is a typical utterance of this 



view; 



The civilization of any people is the slow and toil- 
some growth of centuries, an unfolding of the peo- 
ple's spirit itself. Its virtue, its essence lies in this 
very fact. How then shall such a product be imposed 
upon an alien and inferior race? They cannot receive 
it; they can put it on only as an outer garment; it 
can never become truly theirs, the efflorescence of their 
own souls. . . . Generation after generation of cod- 

[127] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

dling and sympathy in the North has not effaced a 
single racial trait nor raised by a single notch the 
average character, moral or mental or physical.^ 

He has had an abnormal degree of help. The good 
side of his record must therefore bear a heavy discount. 

So far as this is true may it not apply to the bad side 
of his record as well.'* 

But is it true? Has the negro experienced anything 

■Mr- J c • 1 other than the ordinary conditions of prog- 
Misread oociol- . i • i ,, 

ogy; the ress in a backward race m the present age? 

Charge of He is petulantly counseled to develop his 

epen ence ^^^ civilization ; yet the sociologist de- 
clares, 

A true social evolution obeying resident forces has 
nearly disappeared from the face of the earth, seeing 
that to-day the germs of every new social arrange- 
ment are blown throughout the world, and peoples 
at the most diverse stages of culture are discarding 
their native institutions and eagerly adopting the 
jurisprudence, the laws, and the organization of the 
most advanced societies.^ 

The stimulus of a more advanced civilization, therefore, 
far from being unique, is the natural, normal, and inevi- 
table condition of progress in any less favored race or 
group. So much for bad sociology. 

The negro has also been the victim of equally bad psy- 
chology. The attempt to apply the principles of indivi- 
dual development to the case of a backward race has been 
one-sided and marred by loose thinking ; besides it has not 

» W. B. Smith, The Color-Line, pp. 259, 260. 
* Ross, Foundations of Sociology, p. 234. 

[128] 



WHAT THE NEGRO HAS DONE FOR HIMSELF 

allowed for the imperfect analogy between the two. It Is 
perfectly true that culture must be the unfolding of inner 
^. J p . capacities ; but it is equally true that the 
chology; the means of their awakening is imitation. The 
Charge of child instinctively imitates the ways of his 

^^ ^^ surroundings ; only after he has done so is 

the sense of their inner significance aroused. He does not 
first learn why a thing should be done, and then do it ; he 
first does it, and thereby becomes inwardly aware why it 
should be done. What the critic probably means to charge 
is that the negro, when he imitates the white man's ways, 
does not get an adequate inner sense of their meaning. 
But imitation itself as the means of mental progress is the 
only way for even the Caucasian genius to enter into the 
gains of his race. The most original and spontaneous of 
gifts comes this way. No people could be excessively imi- 
tative except as their imitation might fail to fructify 
in the awakening of a self-explanatory and justifying 
feeling. 

Is there any evidence that the negro is deficient in such 
inner responsiveness? This is the heart of the issue. Un- 

T r> doubtedlv some members of his race are; lust 

Inner Ke- -^ . . 

sponse to as some of a company of ostensible worship- 

Things ers of God or votaries of fashion manifestly 

do not enter into the meaning of the acts they 
share. We see nothing laughable when an Arizona mil- 
lionaire painfully speaks by the book, although his spon- 
taneous utterance is picturesquely ungrammatical ; but the 
negro's gravity in speech stirs our risibilities. We suspect 
him of posing ; possibly he is. It is not to be expected that 
a general inner responsiveness to lately imitated ways 
will be acquired by the majority of a race in one genera- 
tion — especially by those of its number whose mental 

9 r 129 1 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

habits are no longer plastic. But that the negro as a race 
is in America following the ways of a civilization which is 
essentially meaningless to him, to which his outward con- 
formity signifies no inner response, is sheer assumption. 
Whether he would ever have developed anything like it if 
left to himself is beside the issue. What he would now do 
if deprived of the social pressure of his nation and age is 
equally so. Forgotten, the pure American stock in the 
Southern Appalachians degenerated. Races were not 
meant to live in isolation. Civilizations have never been 
independent creations. This is a world of human inter- 
course and mutual service. Unnatural it is, and unneces- 
sary, to suppose that the American negro will ever be 
called to take the part of a racial Robinson Crusoe. Who 
dares to call the sunderings of the Ice Age the law of 
Christian civilization ? 

But, it is said, after all the black man does not respond 
to the forms of our life with exactly the same sense of 
The Selfsame meaning that we get. Precisely ; here the 
Response not principle of originality comes in. We imi- 
Desirable tate ; we are thereby initiated into the mean- 

ing of acts ; but we are colorless souls if we do not read 
something unique in them. The individual is never a du- 
plicate. Speaking of inner experience " the same " never 
means "just the same." The judgment which condemns 
the negro as imitative frequently adds, " But whatever he 
does, he still remains a ' nigger.' " There cannot be higher 
praise. To imitate, to become enlightened thereby, and to 
impart some large measure of one's own peculiar mental 
contour into shared experience is the formula for normal 
human growth. It is desirable that inner meanings have 
only enough generic resemblance to enable men to co- 
operate in the large. The meaning of religion, for ex- 



WHAT THE NEGRO HAS DONE FOR HIMSELF 

ample, to an average negro congregation is too remote 
from its meaning to certain types of whites to allow them 
to mix comfortably in a conmion service ; it is not so re- 
mote as to put the negro church out of the fellowship of 
the churches of America. 

If men are sufficiently alike to participate in a common 
civiHzation, it is well to have them sufficiently unlike to 
give that civilization interesting variety and esthetic and 
moral enrichment. This the negro and his institutions 
help to do. 

Well, then, admit that the negro has genuinely acquired 
whatever the facts show him outwardly to possess. Has it 
No Contempo- not been disproportionately through others' 
rary American efforts? Emphatically, No ! Through slav- 
Much for ^^y^ ^* ^^ said, the South " gave " the negro 

Himself the English language, Christianity, the rudi- 

mentary arts. So it did — after a fashion. So it does 
to its white men of to-day. Each generation of children 
takes for granted that it should receive an inheritance of 
wealth, culture, and opportunity; of material and social 
capital. No one charges it with inordinate dependence on 
this account. The negro has never had a thousandth part 
of the help the more prosperous classes of whites have had. 
It is not the fact nor degree of assistance that causes 
remark, but the surprise that it should have been held out 
at all to a despised race. That race, too, is identified by 
its color, set apart by social barriers and advertised as an 
object of charity. But just this fact of its isolation en- 
ables us to measure its comparative achievement and to 
say positively that no group of contemporary Americans 
has so largely created its own successes as has the negro 
of the last two generations. Whatever service the nation 
renders her children has been reduced to the minimum for 

[TsT] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

him. He has had less help and more hindrance than any 
other. Over the record of his gains we may justly write, 
What the negro has done for himself. 

II. WITHIN THE NATIONAL LIFE 

We are first to consider how largely the negro bulks 
in his more external relations to the nation as mere phy- 
Comparative sical presence and as economic producer. 
Place: Speaking numerically, first of all, he has 

Numerical doubled his numbers since emancipation and 

now comprises one-third of the population of the South 
and eleven per cent of that of the entire nation. 

The negro has greatly extended his habitat and range. 
While only one-tenth of his people live outside of the South, 
there are to-day more negroes in New York 
than in Richmond ; more in Chicago than in 
Charleston ; while Washington, not New Orleans, is the 
negro metropohs. Mississippi has a town composed ex- 
clusively of negroes, but so has Iowa. Into Montana and 
Idaho, and even the Canadian northwest, the negro miner 
has gone. The students of missionary schools share in a 
systematic and periodic industrial movement of the race. 
There is an annual summer exodus of boys from Brick 
School, North Carolina, to the truck farms of Connecticut, 
and of Fisk students to city jobs in Chicago. A washer- 
woman in Montclair, New Jersey, turns out to be a gradu- 
ate of an American Missionary Association school in 
Jonesboro, Tennessee. • A barber in Florida will discourse 
famiharly of the Pacific coast cities. I know of Oklahoma 
cotton growers who return every winter to their old homes 
in North Carolina, and can afford to do it. Read at large 
in census statistics such facts indicate a gradual redistri- 

[132] 



WHAT THE NEGRO HAS DONE FOR HIMSELF 

bution of negro population throughout the North and 
West, showing increasing capacity for long-distance mi- 
gration in response to economic opportunity. 
^ . The occupations of the American negro in 

Occupational ^rt/^/-w i- ^^ 

lyOO were as loUows: 

Agriculture, fishing, and mining .... 1,757,403 or 57% 

Domestic and personal service 963,080 or 31% 

Manufacturing and mechanical industries 172,970 or 6% 

Trade and transportation 145,717 or 5% 

Professional service 22,994 or 1% 

As compared with native born and foreign born whites 
the most striking contrast is the excessive proportion of 
negroes engaged in agriculture, and their great deficiency 
in trade, transportation, manufacturing, and mechanical 
industries. In these occupations their proportion is only 
about one-tenth that of the whites. 

The census further divides these groups of occupations 
into twenty-seven special employments. In all but three 
of these the negro made absolute gains and in thirteen he 
made relative gains during the last census period. On the 
other hand he suffered slight losses in some of the skilled 
industries, the significance of which fact is considered in 
a later paragraph. In agriculture, to which over one- 
half of his productive energy is given, the negro operates 
one-third of the improved acreage of the South and pro- 
duces one -third of the annual crop values. This is prob- 
ably not because he is as good a farmer as the white man 
(his deficiency in the use of fertilizers, for example, shows 
that he is not), but because in the main he occupies the 
better land. Yet whatever his deficiencies he exercises a 
tremendous productive function in his section, and annu- 
ally adds untold millions to the national wealth. If he is a 

fiiil 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

problem he is also an economic asset to the South of im- 
measurable value. 

Of the homes in which he lived in 1900 the negro owned 
21.8 per cent, a gain of over 3 per cent in the decade. 
Ownership of '^^^ white population owns 50 per cent of its 
Property: homes. But three-quarters of the negro's 

Homes homes were owned unencumbered by mortgage 

against only two-thirds of the whites. Something like this 
ratio would hold for a row of negro business places. Be- 
cause of the lack of credit facilities the negro merchant 
ordinarily owns a greater proportion and borrows less of 
an invested capital than does the white. Personal prop- 
erty is often bought on deferred payments, yet even the 
negro's spring suit or Easter bonnet is more likely to be 
paid for than if they were on white bodies. 

Of the farms which he operated in 1900 the negro owned 
25 per cent, numbering in all 173,552. Their combined 
acreage was above 12,000,000 or more than 
the total area of Belgium and Holland. His 
proportionate ownership was lowest in Georgia where he 
owned but 14 per cent of the farms, but this had risen to 
20 per cent in 1906. His holdings in that state then 
numbered 82,822 farms, the value of which had increased 
in the six years from $14,196,735 to $23,750,219 — an 
enormous gain of 67.3 per cent. These holdings are 
divided as follows : 

72 negroes own more than 1000 acres each. 

368 negroes own between 500 and 1000 acres each. 

1475 negroes own between 200 and 500 acres each. 

3540 negroes own between 175 and 260 acres each. 

10,392 negroes own between 100 and 175 acres each. 

19,076 negroes own between 50 and 100 acres each. 

39,652 negroes own between 20 and 50 acres each. 
__ 





^^fSi^^ 



•* 

> 



.>»^3ik' 



"''^.'-V J', 



Negro Rural Home, Piedmont Region 




Negro Business Street, Thojiasville, Ga. 



WHAT THE NEGRO HAS DONE FOR HIMSELF 



The highest proportion of farm ownership in 1900 was 
in Virginia, where the negro owns over 58 per cent of the 
farms he occupies. Prosperity perhaps reached its high- 
water mark in Gloucester County. ^ This county has a 
population of 12,832, more than one-half of which is col- 
ored. Here 90 per cent of negro farmers own their 
land, and there is probably the best housed negro rural 
community in America. Under these conditions the race 
shows somewhat less crime proportionally than do the 
whites of Gloucester County. The moral stimulus which 
has made such gains possible is due largely to the proxim- 
ity of Hampton and to the presence at Cappahosic of the 
excellent Institute and model farm of the American Mis- 
sionary Association. 

The economic basis of Gloucester County prosperity 
is, however, the Chesapeake Bay oyster industry, furnish- 
ing the negro a winter occupation and a cash wage which 
has largely been put into property. It is not by the land 
that land was chiefly acquired ; and this, according to my 
observation, is the rule throughout the South. 

How then do negroes acquire land, and what sort do 
they ordinarily acquire.? Is it an easy thing to do? 
How Negroes There is, to be sure, plenty of unimproved 
Acquire Land and waste land in the South, yet Professor 
DuBois is quite right in insisting that it is not now easy 
for the negro to become an owner except of poor and agri- 
culturally impossible land, which he gets because no one 
else wants it. The general law throughout the South is 
that the blacks own the poorer but rent and occupy the 
better land. For acquiring ownership five methods chiefly 
have been open to him: 

* Williams, "Study of Local Conditions," etc., Southern Workman, 
vol. 35, pp. 103 ff. 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

(1) Through a supplementary income from industry. 
I have repeatedly investigated the communities adj acent to 
mission schools and found land ownership proportionate 
to the local opportunities for winter work at a cash 
wage. In Gloucester County it is oystering; elsewhere, 
lumbering, the turpentine industry, tie cutting or rail- 
road and " public " work. Large areas of the Black 
Belt have no such opportunities, and this lack consti- 
tutes their peculiar hopelessness. The unique industrial 
settlement at Kowaliga, Alabama, has for its central 
idea the supplementing of agriculture by industrial op- 
portunities. Often land is bought by a son or brother 
working for wages in the North; or a whole family 
migrates there, expecting to return to the South when 
enough money has been saved to acquire land. Only 
rarely by agriculture does ownership come without a cash 
wage supplementing, for at least part of the year, the 
system of advances. 

(2) Of course exceptions are numerous. The excep- 
tional man, or the average man in an exceptional year, has 
been able to show a cash surplus from the sale of his 
produce, usually, of course, cotton. A " bumper " 
crop or possibly a market manipulation like the famous 
Sully cotton corner will disarrange the landlord's plan 
to take all the tenant makes, and perhaps leave a balance 
which the negro is sometimes wise enough to invest in 
land. 

(3) A small but appreciable amount of property has 

come to the negro by inheritance. This seems strange in 

a race whose fathers were all slaves. The explanation is 

that often its fathers were not slaves but masters, who 

started their newly emancipated or more recently born 

sons with a farm each. I know of many cases where such 

__ 



WHAT THE NEGRO HAS DONE FOR HIMSELF 

inheritance has been the beginning of exceptional negro 
prosperity. 

(4) Philanthropy, too, has 'had a part in helping the 
negro to acquire land. Sometimes the patron was not ful- 
filing blood obligations, but merely expressing the gratitude 
of a former master or present well-wisher. Naturally, how- 
ever, the giving of farms as gifts outright has been rare. 

(5) Endeavors on the part of Northern philanthropy 
to assist the negro to acquire land have generally in- 
volved a sense of the virtue of self-help. They have there- 
fore tried to combine philanthropy and business. Land 
has been set apart and sold to negroes on easy terms. 
Frequently the method has been too easy. The reputation 
for philanthropy has doomed the enterprise in advance. 
Northern inexperience with the negro has complicated 
the problem. Such experiments in connection with many 
mission schools have given opportunity to hundreds of 
negro families, yet few of them have been conspicuous 
successes from the economic standpoint. Just now a 
carefully guarded experiment in connection with the Cal- 
houn School, Alabama, is in process of successful consum- 
mation, and North Carolina furnishes a recent interesting 
example of a frankly commercial venture undertaken by a 
Southern lawyer, Hon. James E. Pou of Raleigh. 

Mr. Pou's account of the experiment follows: 

In 1897 my brother and I bought a large tract 
of practically run-down and abandoned farm land in 
Johnston County about five miles from the railroad. 
This land was naturally good, but had been cultivated 
by tenants for a great many years, and was in a 
thoroughly run-down, dilapidated condition, fences, 
houses, and everything. Much of the land was grown 
up in broom sedge and second-growth pines. 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

We cut the land up into small farms, usually from 
80 to 100 acres, trying to give each farm a road 
front, some upland, some forest and some meadow, 
running back to a creek. We then undertook to sell 
a portion of this land to colored people, as there had 
been a very large negro population on this land be- 
fore; some still remained and were attached to the 
old farm. When they heard it was to be cut up 
and sold, they seemed very anxious to acquire a 
foothold. 

My brother and I found that not one could pay 
cash for the land, but we decided to give them a 
chance. We said to them that if they would go to 
work on the land, we would give them a chance to 
work it out. A considerable number accepted the 
proposition, and they began trying to work out their 
land in the year 1898. At the present time nearly all 
of them have paid for their land, and I do not know of 
a single one who has not either entirely paid for his 
land or so nearly done so that the debt against it is 
a small proportion of its cash value. 

Besides paying for this land, in most instances, and 
paying nearly all for it in other instances, these people 
have greatly improved their farms. They have all 
built comparatively comfortable houses, some with 
four or more rooms. They have cleared land, and a 
large number have good live stock. They all live com- 
fortably and their credit with the stores is good. 
Besides the land they bought from us, I understand 
that some have bought land from other people. I 
understand that Hezekiah Watson and his boys own 
land easily worth from three to five thousand dollars, 
and it is nearly, if not quite, all paid for. These 
men were tenants in 1897, and hardly ever expected 
to own land. 

I have taken a great deal of interest in the out- 

[138] 



WHAT THE NEGRO HAS DONE FOR HIMSELF 

come of this experiment (for it was an experiment to 
sell land on credit to colored people) and I have 
watched the conduct of these people closely. I do not 
think that one of these men has been in court since they 
bargained for the land. I have heard of no trouble in 
their community. Their white neighbors speak well 
of them and they are regarded by everybody as a use- 
ful addition to the community. I think the determin- 
ation to own their homes has nerved these people up 
to unusual effort and their success shows what an in- 
dustrious man can do when he tries. 

I do not think that a single person that bought 
land from us has thrown his part up. One of these 
men moved away, but some other colored man of the 
community took his trade and carried it out. I think 
every one of the men now lives on his own land, most 
of them clear of incumbrance. This community has 
its own church and schoolhouse and the young ones 
can generally read and write. 

No general or complete statistics of negro ownership of 
city property exists, but their assessments in many 
Southern communities are impressive and their rent-rolls 

^. „ long. Some indication is furnished by the 

City Property i. /r ^ - .- t.- i- ^u 

results 01 recent investigation oi the prop- 
erty holdings of ninety former students of Tougaloo 
University. Forty-nine own 5,896 acres of land valued at 
$26,430 ; seventy-two own 239 houses, mostly in towns 
and cities, valued at $118,075, and sixty-eight own town 
and city lots valued at $101,040. The ninety persons in- 
vestigated represented thirty-six occupations. Such a 
widespread holding of moderate property, showing suc- 
cess in such varied lines of livelihood, is more significant 
of race progress than large acquirements on the part of 
a few. 

fiiol 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

Naturally no definite information is available as to the 

wealth of the negro business and professional classes. We 

„, ,., , are assured that the wealth of the thirty-six 

Wealth of , -' 

Business and delegates at the 1908 meeting of the Negro 

Professional Business Men's League, who gave talks on 
how they had succeeded, as well as of most of 
the five hundred delegates on the convention floor, would 
have to be represented by five and six figures. A superfi- 
cial acquaintance with the professional negro in any of 
the larger Southern cities will discover not a few whose 
incomes are upwards of $5000. In other words, a fair 
proportion of the race is, financially speaking, successful 
beyond the average American. 

Statistics of government employment show a number of 
negroes enjoying comfortable Federal salaries. In the 
(Government District of Columbia alone two hundred and 
Service ninety-two receive more than $1000 per year. 

The total number of Federal employees of the race is over 
5500. All over the South the " Africanization of the 
post-office " is a familiar cry. Such Africanization can 
only take place after competitive examinations shared by 
white candidates. In so large a city as Mobile, recently, 
the entire force of mail-carriers was black, as were a large 
number of other post-ofllce employees. For a series of 
years this service absorbed all the male graduates of 
Emerson Institute in that city. 

III. WITHIN RACIAL LINES 

However impressive the exhibit of the negro's material 
progress, the most important thing which he has yet done 
for himself is to create social agencies and institutions. 
We shall follow out the story of his quantitative gains, 

[uol 




REPRESENTATIVE NEGROES 



George W. Crawford, 

Attorney, New Haven, Conn. 

A. C. Garner, 

Pastor, Washington, D. C. 

H. H. Proctor, D.D., 
Pastor, Atlanta, Ga. 



J. W. Work, 

Professor, Fisk University 

Wm. N. DeBerry, 

Pastor, Springfield, Mass 

Geo. W. Moore, D.D., 

Supt. of Negro Church Work, American 
Missionary Association 



WHAT THE NEGRO HAS DONE FOR HIMSELF 

but shall from this point attempt to accompany it with an 
interpretation of that qualitative development within the 
race which has made them possible. For a study of negro 
institutional progress reveals a type of organizing ability 
and instinctive social genius which prophesy immeasurable 
results. 

A lady from Virginia, new to a border city, afforded her 
friends much innocent amusement by the inquiry whether 
Domestic the wife of a negro janitor could be engaged 

Institutions to wash dishes on a special occasion. She was 
dismayed to be told that she herself would be as likely to 
go out washing dishes as would the janitor's wife. This 
status of the negro woman as mistress of her own home the 
Virginian had never met before. 

Now the transfer of black mothers and daughters since 
emancipation from the kitchen or field to the fireside, with 
its privacy, sanctities, and graces, is perhaps the most 
radical revolution in the structure of negro society. That 
the creation of the home is a moral gain, all recognize. 
But popular thought fails to see in it a type of social 
organization new to the race, an unaccustomed division 
and specialization of labor. In view of this novelty, the 
conjugal statistics of the census ought not to be taken just 
for granted. It is a tremendous fact that the race has ad- 
justed itself to civilized marriage. This adjustment is 
indeed imperfect. But, as we shall later discover, its weak- 
ness is due less to wickedness than to economic conditions. 
As compared with Africa and slavery, the gain is immeas- 
urable, and a complete transition is hopefully assured by 
the material and moral progress of the past. All told, 
the domestic reorganization of his life is the American 
negro's most magnificent achievement. 

The prosperous citizen who chances to overhear his 

— - 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

cook converse with her kitchen neighbor about " lodge " 

X, . T and " ten-cent dues " ; who finds that his wife 

Economic In- . i i 

stitutions: cannot go to the theater to-night because 

Fraternal and " Caroline wants to go to the initiation," or 
nsurance discovers his own way blocked by a procession 

of a colored " Sir Knights," may dismiss such " nigger 
organizations " with a smile of indifference and contempt. 
Not so with the sociological expert. He sees in them pro- 
found economic originality and wisdom. " The first prac- 
tical shelter," says Prof. Simon N. Patten, " of every 
man just over the subsistence line is in a fund for sick, 
death, or strike benefits, or in building and loan associa- 
tions." On his humble levels of fraternalism the negro is 
developing social capacity and husbanding material re- 
sources ; the results already add greatly to his group- 
strength, both economic and moral. His institutions of 
savings and insurance are yet chaotic in character. The 
strongest bear the names and assume to be legitimate off- 
shoots of the older secret orders, like Masons, Odd Fel- 
lows, and Pythians. All told, they own from four to five 
millions of dollars' worth of property, and collect a 
milhon and a half annually from their members. The 
more significant institutions, however, are local. Secret 
society halls dot the rural South and cities are honey- 
combed with lodge rooms. Much of the motive behind 
these enterprises is naive and primitive — a half super- 
stitious desire to be " buried right," a childish love of 
display, the convivial instinct; but along with these goes 
a sound, economic instinct directed to substantial group 
ends. To be sure, the financial management of the local 
societies is often lamentably lax, and in some of the pop- 
ular insurance orders a scientific basis of operations is 
lacking, yet both are learning by their mistakes and are 

[142] 



WHAT THE NEGRO HAS DONE FOR HIMSELF 

slowly correcting them. As an administrator of charities 
in a border city, I frequently found low-grade negroes 
fortified through their lodges against loss through sick- 
ness and death as the corresponding white class was not. 

The secret of much of the negro's success in acquiring 
property lies in modest organizations of the savings and 
Building and ^^^^ ^^P^' ^ typical example is that of the 
Loan Associa- Gloucester, Virginia, Land, Loan and Build- 
*^°°^ ing Association. It was organized under the 

inspiration of Principal Price of the Cappahosic Insti- 
tute. It endeavors to aid its members to secure homes or 
to establish themselves in business, and to provide a profit- 
able investment for savings. Its charter is an instrument 
carefully drawn in the light of the best experience and 
conforming to the state law. Shares are $10 each on 
a capital stock of $25,000. They are acquired by an 
advanced payment of $1, which covers the first ten 
months' dues and ten cents per month thereafter till the 
entire amount is paid. The expenses of administration are 
carried by an entrance fee of twenty-five cents and a 
charge of ten cents on each loan, sale, or transfer. All 
such transactions must have the approval of a lawyer. 
Loans pay eight per cent interest. The membership is 
now over one hundred and seventy, owning from one to 
twenty-five shares of stock each. Seven per cent annual 
dividends have been paid for the last three years. Hun- 
dreds of similar institutions of thrift exist throughout 
negro society. 

In many other lines the cooperative impulse has ex- 
pressed itself. Productive cooperation has been tried in 
Other Forms enterprises as diverse as cotton-mills, coal- 
of Cooperation mines, iron-foundries, brick and tile-work, tur- 
pentine plants, and farms. Negroes have even established 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

three street railways to compete with lines which showed 
race discrimination. In distribution, hundreds of enter- 
prises have been established, especially in grocery and 
drug-stores and in publishing companies. Many of these 
attempts have been financial failures or at least have not 
been permanently profitable, but even these have had great 
educative value. It is not kno^vn whether or not the per- 
centage of failures has been in excess of those of the 
business world at large. They simply repeat the story 
of the first cooperative efforts of any commercially inex- 
perienced group with small capital. But the discovery of 
a widespread will to try such methods is deeply significant. 
They do not impress us because few recognize the possi- 
bilities of the cooperative system for anybody. It does 
not seem to harmonize with the general tendencies of the 
age. Yet the forces of the world never go all in the same 
direction at once. Varied principles of economic associa- 
tion may coincide and thrive. In organizing his group 
resources on lowly levels the negro points the way for 
other handicapped classes. The ships of Lancashire 
weavers who began cooperation on these levels now sail 
all the Seven Seas. Belgian peasants build cooperative 
palaces of marble. It is an American weakness to despise 
the day of small things. We ourselves do not succeed 
that way ; therefore it is not a worthy pathway to success. 
This, attitude shuts the door to comprehensive and just 
judgment of the negro's race-gift of group organization. 
There are no up-to-date statistics on negro trade 
unionism. In 1902, however, 40,000 negroes were mem- 
bers of a group of trade-unions aggregating 
500,000 members. These were most largely 
miners, tobacco-workers, longshoremen, masons, painters, 
and carpenters. The larger group of unions aggregating 

[144] 



WHAT THE NEGRO HAS DONE FOR HIMSELF 



700,000 members had in all only 1000 scattered negro ex- 
ceptions ; and in many cases, no negro members at all. 
This shows on the face of it the comparatively limited 
part of the race in labor organization. Even in unions 
where the negro is numerically strong, his practical op- 
portunities are not uniform. In the South, " locals " are 
generally, though not invariably, organized separately. 
In spite of his union card, prejudice often keeps the negro 
out of opportunity which his white brother receives. 
Where he has been accepted it is generally because he has 
fought his way in. He has begun as a strike-breaker and 
has been afterwards unionized in self-defense by the white 
trade. Trade unionism, like all ideaHstic movements, finds 
it extremely hard to make its practises square with its 
theories. In practise its organization is too often selfish, 
using every prejudice to keep its own monopoly. It is to 
be confessed, too, that the inferior efficiency of the negro 
has often been a heavy load for the union to carry. The 
leaders of the movement have undoubtedly tried not to 
draw the color-line. Nevertheless the actual working 
attitude of organized labor is decidedly adverse to the 
negro, especially in the North. 

The situation is not without signs more favorable to 
him. The recent unparalleled immigration of unskilled 
laborers has compelled the unionist movement to adopt 
a more democratic spirit. " The man who has joined one 
of the unions formed within the last six years learns ' that 
his lot is bound with that of the whole working class ' and 
' that he can no longer advance by building a monopoly 
of labor within his trade.' The lines of industrial caste 
must break in order to give the class which has the nu- 
merical power, free admission into the ranks above it." ^ 
> Patten, New Basis of Civilization, p. 104. 
10 [ 145 ] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

This new attitude gives organized labor a fresh vantage- 
ground in moral principle and its working out and per- 
colation into the South may be counted on as one of the 
most certain and massive forces against race prejudice in 
the future. 

The foregoing is an inadequate treatment of the grave 
problem of the relation of the negro to organized labor. 
Other Forms ^^ ^^ ^ sufficient answer, however, to the charge 
of Labor that he has shown himself lacking in or- 

Organization ganizing capacity. Up to the full measure 
allowed him, he has used the resource of industrial organ- 
ization in its highest form. Beyond that he has devised 
original forms of cooperation, especially to affect agri- 
cultural wages. Said a Virginia clergyman to me, " The 
niggers down here are ruining the country. They 've got 
a secret agreement not to work for less than a dollar a 
day. We cannot get a man for less," Similar laments fill 
the South. In the early winter of 1908 a number of negro 
society halls in southwestern Georgia were dynamited by 
whites. Local press despatches, explaining the occurrence, 
showed significant variations. Some charged the secret 
societies with harboring criminals, others with effecting 
combinations to raise wages. On September 27, 1908, in 
the same region (Calhoun, Baker, and Miller Counties) 
eighteen colored churches and schoolhouses were burned. 
Again two causes were alleged: that negroes plotted as- 
saults, and that they had decided to sell cotton at a lower 
figure than that at which the white planters' association 
was holding the crop.-^ Thus outside of conventional 
labor organization, and in the field of agriculture where 
such organization ordinarily has proved least successful, 
negro group-action is a grim and mighty fact. 
> See dispatch. New York Times, September 28, 1908. 

f 1461 



^a'PIAT THE NEGRO HAS DONE FOR HIMSELF 

With the growth of negro city groups in wealth and 
race consciousness a system of regular banks, now num- 
bering over forty in the United States, has 
arisen to furnish the facilities of commercial 
credit to the rapidly increasing business and investing 
classes. One of the oldest and strongest of these is the 
Dime Savings Bank in Birmingham, Alabama. Starting 
with $500 deposits in 1890, it has grown to hold 
$1,097,224 in 1906-7. This considerable sum belonged 
to 9112 depositors. 

Probably the most remarkable negro economic institu- 
tion is, however, the United Order of the True Reformers 

^ , . ^. with headquarters at Richmond, Virginia. It 

Combination . . ^ . . ... 

of Activities by is a national organization combining an in- 

the True surance company with 80,000 members, a 

e ormers central bank which has done a total business 

of $16,000,000 (and the only one in Richmond which 
continually paid specie during the panic of 1893), and a 
real estate enterprise owning twenty-seven income-bringing 
buildings, most of which are rented to local lodges. The 
Washington building cost $100,000 and contains a the- 
ater, a dozen lodge rooms, an armory, two stores, several 
offices, and a barber shop. The truly remarkable record 
of the Order is summarized as follows : '^ 

1881. The Grand Fountain organized with 100 mem- 
bers and $150 cash. 
1907. The Grand Fountain membership increased to 
80,000. 

Sick and death benefits paid to date $2,340,389 

Paid up capital of the savings-bank 100,000 

Deposits in the savings-bank 336,272 

> The World's Work, June, 1908, pp. 10, 348. 
— - 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

Real estate department's holdings 388,000 

Value of property of Old Folks' Home .... 36,495 

The yearly business of five stores 496,373 

The negro church is an intricate and impressive social 

organization, as well as an institution of the higher life. 

T rx r- £ It is indeed the chief institutional creation of 

Institutions of . . 

the Higher the race and its success is a vast economic 

Life: the achievement. Its proportionate membership 

greatly exceeds that of the white churches, in- 
cluding probably thirty-six per cent of the total negro 
population and of the population above ten years of age 
over fifty per cent. This number is distributed through 
about 25,000 local churches, of which more than four- 
fifths are in ecclesiastical connections exclusively under 
negro control. Ninety-eight per cent of all negro church 
members belong to various Baptist and Methodist bodies. 
It is noteworthy that, while in the Methodist Episcopal 
polity authority is highly centralized, the Baptist system 
Evidence of ^^ extremely democratic. Socially this is sig- 
Administrative nificant as showing the negro's capacity to 
Capacity ^gg widely divergent governmental types. He 

has succeeded about equally well under the two ecclesias- 
tical extremes. Thirteen bishops of the African Metho- 
dist Episcopal church, for example, are said to 

wield the power directly over 750,000 American 
negroes, and indirectly over two or more millions, 
administer $10,000,000 worth of property and an 
annual budget of $500,000. 

These bishops are elected for life by a General 
Conference meeting every four years. The member- 
ship of the General Conference consists of ministerial 
and lay delegates : the clerical delegates arc elected 

[US] 




Ingraji Chapki, J. K. Buick Stiiooi., N. C. 
Largest A. M. A. school under negro control 




FlltST CoNGREGATIONAI. ChLTRCH, AtI.ANTA, Ga. 

Pioneer in the South in institutional work for the race 



WHAT THE NEGRO HAS DONE FOR HIMSELF 

from the Annual Conferences, one for every thirty 
ministers. Two lay delegates for each Annual Con- 
ference are selected by the representatives of the offi- 
cial church boards in the Conference. Thus we have 
a peculiar case of negro government, with elaborate 
machinery and the experience of a hundred years. 
How has it succeeded.'^ Its financial and numerical 
success has been remarkable, as has been shown. 
Moreover, the bishops elected form a remarkable 
series of personalities. Together the assembled 
bishops are perhaps the most striking body of negroes 
in the world in personal appearance: men of mas- 
sive physique, clear-cut faces, and undoubted intelli- 
gence. Altogether the church has elected about 
thirty bishops. These men fall into about five classes. 
First, there were those who represented the old type 
of negro preacher — men of little learning, honest and 
of fair character, capable of following other leaders. 
Perhaps five or six of the African Methodist Episco- 
pal bishops have been of this type, but they have 
nearly all passed away. From them developed, on the 
one hand, four men of aggressive, almost riotous 
energy, who by their personality thrust the church 
forward. While such men did much for the physical 
growth of the church, they were often men of ques- 
tionable character, and in one or two instances ought 
never to have been raised to the bishopric. On the 
other hand, in the case of four other bishops, the 
goodness of the older class developed toward intense, 
almost ascetic piety, represented preeminently in the 
late Daniel Payne, a man of almost fanatic enthusi- 
asm, of simple and pure life and unstained reputation, 
and of great intellectual ability. The African Metho- 
dist Episcopal Church owes more to him than to any 
single man, and the class of bishops he represents is 
the salt of the organization. Such a business plant 

[149] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

naturally has called to the front many men of business 
ability, and perhaps five bishops may be classed as 
financiers and overseers. The rest of the men who 
have sat on the bench rose for various reasons as pop- 
ular leaders — by powerful preaching, by pleasing 
manners, by impressive personal appearance. They 
have usually been men of ordinary attainment, with 
characters neither better nor worse than the middle 
classes of their race. Once in office they have usually 
grown in efficiency and character. On the whole, 
then, this experiment in negro government has been 
distinctly encouraging. It has brought forward men 
varying in character, some good and some bad, but on 
the whole decency and ability have been decidedly in 
the ascendancy, and the church has prospered.^ 

Equally significant of administrative capacity are the 
multifarious denominational activities of the Baptists 
through their local and state bodies and their General 
Convention and Missionary Boards. In short, these 
enormous and complicated social engines actually work 
under exclusively black control. 

As human institutions, the churches have made most 
astounding strides. On the material side, they count 
M t ■ 1 FT IH- ^o'^^ 25,000 church edifices. Frequently, as 
ings and in representative cities like Macon and Mo- 

Business bile, these rank in quality with the better 

'^ ^^ public buildings. The total property of 

the negro denominations is probably worth $40,000,000. 
Their combined annual expenditure approaches $10,000,- 
000, at least $250,000 of which goes to education under 
church control. Negro Baptists support eighty schools, 
and the largest of the Methodist bodies twenty-five. 

' "The Negro Church," Atlanta University Publications, No. 8, p. 130. 
""" [150] 



WHAT THE NEGRO HAS DONE FOR HIMSELF 



Many of these are of extremely low grade, doing but 
crudely work which the state ought to be doing for its 
citizens. On the contrary, the best, like Wilberforce Uni- 
versity, Ohio, rank with the first negro schools in the 
country. The educational work of the negro churches 
has of course had much help from white philanthropy, 
especially that of the North. To counterbalance this, 
however, it should be noted that many schools supported 
by Northern missionary agencies show a large tuition 
income from their negro pupils. 

About twenty official periodicals of standing and a 
horde of local sectarian papers constitute probably the 
most widely influential religious press of America. The 
Baptist Publication House for the difl^usion of religious and 
denominational literature is one of the most extensive of 
race enterprises. It occupies four brick buildings on one of 
the chief business thoroughfares of Nashville, Tennessee. 

The plant consists of a large first-class steam- 
boiler, two engines, a complete electric plant, a com- 
plete system of telephones, with a well-regulated set 
of the most improved power printing-presses, a well- 
regulated bindery, with all the machinery and equip- 
ment that is commonly attached to the most modern 
printing and publishing plant, together with a com- 
plete composing room, with all of the modern para- 
phernalia, including linotype machines. This plant, 
with its stock, is fully worth to the denomination 
$100,000 and if it were in a stock company its stock, 
if placed at $100,000, would sell in the market at par, 
and its income would pay a creditable dividend.^ 

The annual circulation of religious publications through 

this agency exceeds five and one-half million copies, while 

' "The Negro Church," Atlanta University PubHcations, No. 8, p. 114. 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

as employers of labor this and similar ecclesiastical enter- 
prises furnish a means of support to thousands of negroes. 
Descriptions of the working status of typical negro 
Working churches, for the rural district, the town 

Status of the and the city respectively, are borrowed 
Negro Church from competent first-hand studies by the 
Atlanta Conference. 

Thomas County is situated in extreme southwest 
Georgia, within twenty miles of the northern boun- 
The Rural dary line of Florida. According to the 

Church census of 1900, the negro population 

was 17,450. Among this population there are ninety- 
eight churches. These churches represent all denom- 
inations, Baptist predominating, there being only one 
Episcopal and two Congregational churches. This 
number gives the actual churches which we have been 
able to learn of. It will be a safe estimate to affirm 
that about twenty per cent of this number may be 
added, of which we failed to learn. 

This will give a church for every one hundred and 
fifty persons, and here it might be said that, unlike 
much of our American population, the negro is well 
churched. It is his only institution and forms the 
center of his public life. He turns to it not only for 
his spiritual wants, but looks toward it as the center of 
his civilization. Here he learns the price of cotton or 
the date of the next circus ; here is given the latest 
fashion-plates or the announcement for candidates for 
justice of the peace. In fact, the white office-seeker 
has long since learned that his campaign among the 
negroes must be begun in the negro church, and by a 
negro preacher. 

These ninety-eight institutions in Thomas County, 
like those of many other counties, have interesting his- 




Tin; Ya.machaw Section, Savannah, Ga. 





^■1 itilri ■ '^n mI 8 1 liilll 



Negro Tenements, Charleston, S. C. 
These and twenty more have as sole water-supply an open dipping well 



WHAT THE NEGRO HAS DONE FOR HIMSELF 

tories. About half this number represent the churches 
whose beginning has been normal, the natural out- 
growth of expansion. The other half's history is 
checkered. Their rise can almost invariably be traced 
to one or two methods. First, there is the proverbial 
split. A careful study of the roll of membership in 
many of the churches will reveal the second method. 
Some brother is called to preach. This call is so thun- 
derous, and the confidence that he can make a better 
preacher than the present pastor so obtrusive, that he 
soon finds that there is little welcome in the sacred 
rostrum of the old church. He therefore takes his 
family and his nearest relatives and moves away. 
Study the rolls, therefore, of many of the churches, and 
you will find that they are largely family churches, 
and that the first preacher was some venerable patri- 
arch. I think one will be perfectly safe in concluding 
that two-thirds of the growth in churches of the vari- 
ous denominations has been made in this way ; and 
that little has been accomplished by the church execu- 
tives as the result of direct effort at church extension. 
It will be readily seen that churches having their 
origin in this way merely duplicate the old institution ; 
often it is not a creditable duplicate. I know of no 
rural church in Thomas County whose inception had 
the careful nursing of an educated, cultured leader. 
Others have labored and we have entered into their 
labors. The largest churches and the biggest preach- 
ers in Thomas County do little home missionary work 
and organize no new churches.^ 

Contrasted with its feeble and socially divisive rural 

The Village influence is the typically central place of 

Church the church in the small town, as revealed by 

a study of Farmville, Virginia. 

* "The Nef^o Church," Atlanta University Publications, No. 8, p. 57. 

__ 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

The church is much more than a religious organ- 
ization ; it is the chief organ of social and intellectual 
intercourse. As such it naturally finds the free demo- 
cratic organizations of the Baptists and Methodists 
better suited to its purpose than the strict bonds of 
the Presbyterians or the more aristocratic and cere- 
monious Episcopalians. Of the 262 families of Farm- 
ville, only one is Episcopalian and three are Presby- 
terian ; of the rest, twenty-six are Methodist and 218 
Baptist. In the town of Farmville there are three 
colored church edifices, and in the surrounding coun- 
try there are three or four others. 

The cliief and overshadowing organization is the 
First Baptist Church of Farmville. It owns a large 
brick edifice on Main Street. The auditorium, which 
seats about 500 people, is tastefully furnished in light 
wood, with carpet, small organ, and stained-glass 
windows. Beneath this is a large assembly room with 
benches. This building is really the central club-house 
of the community, and in greater degree than is true 
of the country church in New England or the West. 
Various organizations meet here, entertainments and 
lectures take place here, the church collects and dis- 
tributes considerable sums of money, and the whole 
social life of the town centers here. The unifying and 
directing force is, however, religious exercises of some 
sort. The result of this is not so much that recrea- 
tion and social life have become stiff and austere, but 
rather that religious exercises have acquired a free 
and easy expression and in some respects serve as 
amusement-giving agencies. For instance, the camp- 
meeting is simply a picnic, with incidental sermon and 
singing ; the rally of the country churches, called the 
"big meeting," is the occasion of the pleasantest social 
intercourse, with a free barbecue; the Sunday-school 
convention and the various preachers' conventions are 

[154] 



WHAT THE NEGRO HAS DONE FOR HIMSELF 

occasions of reunions and festivities. Even the weekly 
Sunday service serves as a pleasant meeting and 
greeting place for working-people, who find little time 
for visiting during the week. 

From such facts, however, one must not hastily form 
the conclusion that the religion of such churches is 
hollow or their spiritual influence bad. While under 
present circumstances the negro church cannot be 
simply a spiritual agency, but must also be a social, 
intellectual, and economic center, it nevertheless is a 
spiritual center of wide influence; and in Farmville 
its influence carries nothing immoral or baneful.^ 

Atlanta, with a colored population in 1900 of 35,727, 
had fifty-four negro churches, twenty-nine of which were 
The City Baptist, twenty-one Methodist, while four be- 

Church longed to other denominations. The total 

membership was upwards of 16,000, of which the Bap- 
tists had over 10,000. The combined value of church 
property was upwards of $250,000, and their annual in- 
come nearly $52,000. The most significant thing about 
the statistics was the fact that the reported active mem- 
bership averaged little more than one-half the total mem- 
bership claimed. 

Detailed investigations discover that the Methodist 
membership is the most homogenous. It consists of the 
families of laborers with a sprinkling from the business 
and professional classes. In education they rank from 
fair to poor. Most of its ministers are men of charac- 
ter with moderate degrees of education. The Baptist 
churches, on the contrary, seem to fall into two extremes. 
They are either composed of an extremely poor and de- 

* "The Negro Church," Atlanta University Publications, No. 8, pp. 

81-82. 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

graded membership, with unclean, miserably lighted, and 
unhealthy places of worship, and with pastors to match; 
or of the more influential classes. Some of the Baptist 
pastors are men of commanding popular gifts, but they 
generally tend to display rather than to solid attain- 
ment. A small and select minority, the intellectual and 
moral elite of Atlanta, are in the Congregational, Episco- 
pal, and Northern Methodist churches. ■'^ 

Passing from its social and economic phases to the 
central question of the negro churches' efficiency as a 
Moral and moral and spiritual power, we need in fair- 

Spiritual ness to confess the shortcomings of most 

Efficiency white churches in these directions. Human 

brotherhood is undeniably a chief comer-stone of the 
Christian religion, but race antipathy has not yet been 
overcome by the white churches, either South or North. 
The religious shortcomings of the negro churches have 
been merely at somewhat different points from those of 
the white. These points are chiefly five: 

(1) They have frequently subordinated worship to 
amusement. Tliis is partly due to the poverty of the 
race in social institutions. The church, in order to serve 
its people, has had to be a substitute for theater, lyceum, 
political club, and general social center. It has truly 
served in these things as well as in its spiritual ministries, 
but it has proportionately overdone them. 

(2) Frequently the negro church has tolerated lax 
moral standards both among ministry and membership, 
particularly in financial and sexual matters. This deep 
stain is as bitterly confessed by the better negroes as it 
is bitterly charged by the white South. Direct evidence 

» See "The Negro Church," Atlanta University Publications, No. 8, 
pp. 78, 79. 



WHAT THE NEGRO HAS DONE FOR HIMSELF 

from a wide field of investigation shows that slow gains 
are being made in these matters. 

( 3 ) The negro church has been to a sad degree the field 
of selfish exploitation by unprincipled leaders, who sought 
financial or political gains through ecclesiastical power. 
Success has more largely centered upon the personality 
of the pastor than in any white denomination. Churches 
have been known to gain as many as a thousand members 
under one pastor, only to lose them all when he left. 
But institutional stability is rapidly growing and is curb- 
ing such abnormal individual control. 

(4) Sometimes the negro church has not only failed 
to sense the best tendencies of race development, but has 
obstinately opposed and subordinated them. Neither Mr. 
Washington nor the friends of higher education have 
found much genuine sympathy in the negro ecclesiastics. 
The leadership of the race in its larger, more fundamental, 
and, especially, its national relations has been with the 
schools rather than with the church. 

(5) Finally, the negro church has been almost entirely 
blind to the fundamental social problems of the varied 
and rapidly developing groups within the race. It has 
been of very little service in the adjustment of the 
negro to his peculiar and trying city conditions. The 
crucial problems of health, for example, and of social 
betterment in general, have remained almost untouched. 
Neither has the church been an agent of rural progress. 
At no point has it led in the more serious attempts 
to adjust the race to the new conditions of its life in 
America. 

The Atlanta Conference collected hundreds of opinions 

from representative negro laymen and Southern whites 

on these problems of the moral status of the negro church. 

__ 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

In general they indicated hopeful progress at all the weak 
points. 

A striking feature of them was the frequent recogni- 
tion of the exceptional character of the small but grow- 
Exceptional ing group of negro churches affiliated with 
Character of Northern denominations. These constitute 
AffiT^t^ ... but two per cent or less of the negro church 
Northern membership of America, but the testimony 

Denominations to their greatly disproportionate influence 
was decisive. A Southern planter, for example, answer- 
ing " No " to all questions of general improvement in the 
negro church, made the following exception: 

We have one good, honest, and reliable negro 
preacher in our community, and he is trying to raise 
the standard of living among his race. But he has 
an up-hill business to do so. The old negroes, as a 
whole, are a long ways better than the young ones. 
The negro preacher that I refer to is O. Faduma.^ 

Mr. Faduma is principal of the American Missionary 
Association school at Troy, North Carolina, and pastor 
Limitation to ^^ ^^^ Congregational Church. Naturally 
and within the type of church life which appeals to the 

the City masses of the race repels the cultured negro 

minority which is fully abreast with American civiliza- 
tion. These have largely affiliated themselves with the 
Northern denominations which have done the most for 
negro uplift and education. As class institutions, the 
churches of this select group have their peculiar weak- 
nesses and temptations. They lack contact with the com- 
munity, the masses of which, in turn, denounce them as 
" stuck up " ; they tend to forget patience and sympathy. 

* "The Negro Church," Atlanta University Publications, No. 8, p. 168. 

-_ 



WHAT THE NEGRO HAS DONE FOR HIMSELF 



I am acquainted with a considerable number of such 
churches — small, cultured, sober congregations, but non- 
aggressive, and tending to be selfish. This is the cen- 
tral difficulty with all exceptional groups. On the other 
hand, it is absolutely necessary for the negro church to 
develop standard-bearers, and the tonic effect of the two 
per cent has been deeply felt by the 98 per cent. Thus 
Professor Kelly MUer writes: 

Presbyterian and Congregational missionary socle- 
ties have spent many millions of dollars among the 
freedmen of the South, but the result is seen rather 
in the intellectual and moral uphft than in religious 
proselytism. The real advantage consists largely in 
the reflex influence upon the Methodist and Baptist 
denominations.^ 

When therefore the leaders of such select churches 
happen to be men of popular ability, outreaching zeal and 
social insight, they frequently reach places of command- 
ing influence. To them both white and black turn in the 
hour of clash and crisis, and the higher race-statesmenship 
is largely of their making. Their memberships are small, 
their salaries meager ; they are lonely men and the color- 
line draws cruelly across their hearts, yet many a high- 
salaried white preacher may well envy them their power. 
They have social authority such as is rarely given to men 
of equal ability, and many a Southern community sleeps 
peacefully to-night because a poorly paid but fully trained 
and great-hearted negro preacher stands as a daysman 
between the races. 

In the interest and esteem of some of the Northern mis- 
sionary boards this select type of negro church has been 
» Race Adjustment, p. 137. 
[159] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

rather an adjunct to educational institutions or an effort 
to aid groups of graduates to maintain their ideals in 
the midst of a low-grade society, than an attempt at a 
general denominational propaganda among the race. 
This is confessed by the Congregationalists, the attitude 
of whose missionary agency has been the occasion of sharp 
dissatisfaction on the part of the more aggressive of 
their colored ministry. These feel the sting of ecclesias- 
tical littleness and are ambitious that the best should 
minister to the average life of the race. Depending or- 
dinarily, as these churches have done, upon the presence 
of sufficient groups of cultured negroes, they have cliiefly 
been limited to the city. 

Within a few years, however, the extension of educa- 
tional influences combined with general rural progress has 
Exceptional created a demand in many country places 
Cases of Rural for a more intelligent type of religious 
Success leadership. Movements of revolt from the 

domination of the old illiterate and immoral ministers 
have turned to the churches which, under Northern aus- 
pices, have always maintained the higher standards. Thus 
there has developed a number of thriving groups of 
strictly rural Congregational churches. This body has 
probably the most select membership of any, yet its suc- 
cess with the rank and file of the race has been proved 
in limited areas. Such enterprises could now be infinitely 
multiplied if financial support were provided. Their gen- 
eral race significance will be more largely proved in the 
future. 

The story of almost any one of these rural enterprises 
shows splendid devotion. Recently, near Rockingham, 
North Carolina, a little church of eight adult members 
built a thousand dollar edifice. The pastor, trained in a 

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Servants' Quarters in Rear of a Modern Meaiphis Home 




The Cotton Levee, New Orleans, with Negro Longshoremen 



WHAT THE NEGRO HAS DONE FOR HIMSELF 

mission school, was chief carpenter, and every member had 
some physical share in the construction. They worked 
three or four days in each week. A deacon gave forty 
days' labor, besides working at night till midnight or 
after. His wife and daughters hauled the lumber from the 
sawmill. At night the women sawed boards, held lights, 
and cheered the men at their task by singing plantation 
melodies. A widow, living by washing and ironing, con- 
tributed in work and cash $20. The pastor's share was 
$110. It was a labor of apostolic simplicity and sacrifice. 
Out of church extension funds, a great denomination gave 
$200 of the cost, yet the building essentially represents 
what the negro is doing for himself, and shows how he 
does it. Since its erection the white neighbors, in appre- 
ciative and friendly emulation, have repaired and painted 
their inferior church. 

Typical of the transmission of influence to the country 
through the products of the higher schools is the story 
of a Louisiana pastor, Rev. M. W. Whitt, of Belle Place 
Congregational Church, New Iberia, Louisiana, as given 
by Pres. Frank G. Woodworth: 

Mr. Whitt is a graduate of the Normal Depart- 
ment of Tougaloo and of Howard Theological Semi- 
nary. Fifteen years ago he went to Belle Place as 
pastor of an American Missionary Association church. 
The record of his early days there is of profound in- 
terest, but is another story. So also is the history 
of the religious transformations wrought, though they 
have economic consequences and value. It is only 
with the more strictly economic side that we have 
present concern. When he reached Belle Place in 
1892 the church organization was a complete wreck, 
having gone from one hundred members to three, and 

n [161] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

two of the three were not in regular standing. The 
church building was little more than a cow shed, with 
no ceiling or sashes. There was only one home owner 
in the parish. To-day there is an edifice that would 
be an honor to any town or city in the state, paid 
for, every dollar paid by the people themselves, who 
keep the property well insured. The church has now 
eighty-five members — no slight achievement for col- 
ored Congregationalism, which with its standards must 
at present grow slowly among the negroes. The 
families number thirty, and fifteen of these, stimulated 
by Mr. Whitt's teaching and example, now own their 
own places. Three of the home owners have about 
$3000 of property each. Mr. Whitt has a home that 
cost $1500, owns twenty shares in a building and 
loan association (valued at $200 dollars a share), 
paying in twenty dollars a month for nearly the past 
ten years to secure it, and he and his wife own three 
lots in New Orleans, for one of which he has refused 
$650. It is doubtful if many ministers have been of 
more economic value to the community than this 
American Missionary Association product, whose thrift 
has in no wise lessened the earnestness of his study or 
of his religious life and teaching. The work which 
he has done in the suppression of vice and intemper- 
ance has been of very definite economic value. To cite 
but one example: said a deacon of a neighboring 
church, " I have been in the church eighteen years, 
and it seemed to me that if I did n't get drunk Christ- 
mas I had n't done my duty. I was brought up so. 
But one Sunday night just before Christmas I went 
to Brother Whitt's church. I left my flask of whisky 
under the steps and went in. I listened to him tell- 
ing what Christmas meant, how it should be kept, and 
how almost everybody about, including Christians, 
desecrated the day by drinking and getting beastly 

[Tm] 



WHAT THE NEGRO HAS DONE FOR HIMSELF 

drunk and how families are made to suffer. I said in 
that church I would go home and stop drinking and 
stop renting land. To-day I have a home that cost 
$1000, paid for, and Elder Whitt is the cause of it." 
This is typical of the economic value of the Associa- 
tion's work through the men it has trained. 

To the rule of social complacency and non-aggressive- 
ness on the part of the select city churches there are bril- 
A Ex liant exceptions. The most notable in the 

tional City Congregational fellowship is the First 

Church Church, Atlanta. It is recognized as in- 

cluding the best negroes of the city, and probably no col- 
ored church anywhere has a higher average of character 
and intelhgence in its ranks. At the same time it has long 
maintained a slum mission and other persistent activities 
for the uplift of the more degraded classes. Its pastor, 
the Rev. H. H. Proctor, D.D., a Fisk University and 
Yale graduate, is a man of race-wide influence. He has 
served as assistant moderator of the national body of his 
denomination. He rendered eminent service in inter- 
racial efforts for order and justice after the Atlanta riot. 
The church property occupies a central location in the 
city, and its main edifice has just been added to the ex- 
isting chapel. The completed property is worth toward 
$70,000, and the equipment for institutional work makes 
the church unique among negro religious enterprises. 

Such an attempt to meet the social problems of negro 
city populations in an outreaching spirit of service, besides 
being eminently Christian, is of fundamental importance 
to a race which is popularly judged by its worst, for whom 
its best are held accountable. Indeed, the deepest moral 
problem before the better negro classes is whether they 
will withhold themselves from an energizing fellowship 

[ 163 1 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

with their weaker brethren, or whether they will put their 
own strength under the need of those whose fate they so 
often have to share. 

Most of the organized philanthropic efforts of the 
American negro have been in connection with his churches ; 
Negro though outside of church influence co- 

Philanthropy operative efforts have established many and 
varied institutions. In all, the negro is supporting some 
sixty homes and orphanages, more than thirty hospitals, 
besides hundreds of cemeteries. Recently a number of 
commendable enterprises for the protection and redemp- 
tion of the child-criminal have been undertaken by negro 
women's clubs in various states. 

Among the select city groups flourish manifold other 
institutions of the higher life, expressing its interest in 
Other Institu- literature, music, art, philanthropy, polite 
tions of the intercourse and race ideals. The message of 
Higher Life such a negro poet as Dunbar, of a painter 
like Tanner, a composer like Coleridge Taylor, actors 
like Walker and Williams, a scholar and essayist like 
Professor DuBois or a statesman like Mr. Washington is, 
of course, far wider than the race. It appeals to the whole 
nation and indeed to the world. But its first appeal is to 
the negro minority, their peers. There are thousands of 
negroes who honor and appreciate the works of eminent 
genius which their race has produced. There are women's 
clubs with complete national and state organizations ; dig- 
nified associations for the discussion of public questions, 
such as the Sumner Club of Charleston, which has a history 
of thirty years. The annual musical festivals of the Coler- 
idge Taylor Club of Washington are superb artistic events. 
At a banquet of the Strieby Congregational Club one 

might shut his eyes and never be conscious that he was not 

-_ . 



WHAT THE NEGRO HAS DONE FOR HIMSELF 

attending a similar occasion in Boston. The tone of ser- 
vice and preaching in the First Congregational Church of 
Atlanta would appeal to the most exacting mind. In other 
words, there are select negro groups which not only equal 
but actually exceed the average of national attainment in 
many of the ideal realms. They think and feel and enjoy 
as do other select groups of Americans and live 
accordingly. 

To crown all this varied social evolution the negro has 
developed organs for the control of his further growth. 
Evolution of These appear as two temperamental parties, 
Organized — radicals and conservatives — whose chief 

Group Control respective exponents are the " Niagara 
Movement " led by Dr. DuBois over against Mr. Wash- 
ington and his followers. These parties have found mul- 
tiform agencies of expression and appeal both to the race 
and to the nation ; a vigorous press, an extremely able 
controversial literature, devices for public agitation and 
for bringing political pressure. One may laugh if he will 
at the squabbles of the negro on his side of the color-line. 
Yet through them the race is beating into shape a disci- 
plined and well-officered army, under experienced leader- 
ship. It is following the universal method of learning 
democratic efficiency. The temperamental extremes in any 
group must find themselves, organize, and fight out a bal- 
ance between themselves. Thus the seethings of negro 
sentiment are a deep factor in present American history. 
This " ostracized race in ferment " is fitting itself to play 
a larger part in the common life. It is forging weapons 
of group consciousness and control which will some day 
give its now voiceless power, wisdom, dignity, and weight 
in the counsels of the Republic. 

[wT] 



VI. A BACKGROUND FOR BLACK 

I. DUBIOUS VERDICTS FROM CONFLICTING FACTS 

ONE whose lot it is sometimes to address Northern 
churches in behalf of negro education soon learns 
to his sorrow to distinguish between an audience 
interested and an audience convinced, a distinction which 
Ten Thousand ^^^^^ registers itself in the size of the col- 
vs. Ten lection. Such a description of varied mis- 

Milbon sionary activities as we have attempted in 

the earlier chapter appeals to those who are chiefly moved 
by concrete situations, but in the minds of the more judi- 
cious there frequently remain thoughts like this — and 
sometimes they speak them forth. What is the average 
daily attendance of these schools you have been telling 
about.'' Probably ten thousand. How many negroes are 
at present under the direct influence of your whole group 
of missionary activities.? Possibly one hundred thousand. 
What proportion of American negroes have reached a 
normal standard of character and civilization.'' We speak 
roughly of the " talented tenth " — possibly one million. 
And how many negroes are there in America.'' Nearly ten 
million. Are the things which are true of the ten thousand, 
the hundred thousand, and the million, true also of the ten 
million.'' However promising the exception, however suc- 
cessful the agencies of uplift with the few, however inter- 
esting and worthy the work for which support is asked, 
what about general race tendencies.'' Assure us, if you can, 
that your hopeful story is not related to a mere frag- 
ment of the race — say, that which shares wliite blood — 

while the main currents of the American negro's life 

-— 



A BACKGROUND FOR BLACK 



plunge down toward the abyss. In answer to such just 
and inevitable questions, it is the purpose of this chapter 
to declare the things which are true of the ten million. 

The critics and the defenders of the American negro 
have fought a drawn battle hitherto, and chiefly because 
Unconvincing of defective tactics on both sides. On the 
Optimism one hand there is the Booker T. Washington 

school of optimists, whose chief resource has been the 
cataloguing of case after case of negro success. Here is 
this man and that man and another negro who have made 
good. Every time Mr. Washington comes North he has a 
new lot of men. Every article he writes has new cases. 
Stubbornly and truthfully he reiterates from year to year 
the story of thousands upon thousands of successful ne- 
groes. The trouble with this method is that over against 
it one can bring a case of failure to offset each case of 
success, and probably the failures are in one's own kitchen 
or barnyard, while the successful ones are far away. The 
outcome is that this method does not convince. It has not 
convinced the South where most of the successful negroes 
are, and the nation at large, though impressed, is unsatis- 
fied. The mere enumeration of hopeful facts, however 
massive, cannot justify optimism. It is not enough to 
enumerate; one must weigh the facts. 

If it be true that no people less than half a century out 
of bondage ever made such magnificent gains as the 
Doubts as to American negro has, it is just as true of 
Relative Americans in general. There is no such 

Progress human record as that which our country has 

made since the Civil War. Has the progress of the negro 
been in proportion to the general progress? In spite of 
his tremendous absolute gains, has he really kept pace 
with the rest of the nation? I confess that I am not so 

[1671 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

sure. When, thinking of the negro, we proclaim : " Saul 
has slain his thousands," must we not also add: "And 
David his ten thousands " ? As things are now going, 
would not white America gradually pull ahead of negro 
America, and forever increase the gap between? 

But optimism faces a still deeper difficulty, namely: 
That the present deficiencies of the negro — - which his best 
friends must measure and confess — are in matters so 
serious and so fundamental that if present tendencies hold, 
he is certainly doomed. No amount of progress on other 
lines could possibly overcome bis deep failure in these fun- 
damental respects. When the dark charges against him 
are formulated, they are found to be chiefly three: 

1. He is deficient in physical stamina; 

2. He lacks the fundamental economic virtues ; 

3. He is excessively immoral. 

Whoever is deficient in these things is doomed, if his de- 
ficiencies continue. 

For the first and third charges there exists what looks 
like authoritative proof. According to the census statis- 
A Fighting ties, the American negro's death-rate is twice 

Chance that of the white population ; and his prison 

population is two and one-half times as great as liis pro- 
portion in the general population. His economic weakness 
is supposed to be established by the facts that his numbers 
have absolutely decreased in some of the skilled trades 
and relatively decreased in others ; that, especially in the 
Northern cities, skilled negro workmen are frequently 
forced out of trades into j anitor's and porter's work ; and 
that the South widely testifies that as a laborer the negro 
is deteriorating. These are grave charges and supported 
by ugly facts. They are frequently and unnecessarily 
overstated. At best they are bad enough, and nothing but 



A BACKGROUND FOR BLACK 



the most adequate answer to them will avail to save pop- 
ular faith in the negro. No critic of the race can be more 
anxious to have the nation know how precarious the 
negro's future is, than his friends should be. It is no easy 
battle he has before him ; therefore he needs our help the 
more desperately. The most any one dare contend for him 
is that he has a fighting chance. 

II. NEED OF A SOCIOLOGICAL BACKGROUND 

Whether such a fighting chance will be allowed depends 

ultimately not upon the naked facts, nor even upon the 

„, ., , discovery that some of them are seriously ad- 

rhilosophy '' , , -^ 

always Present verse to the negro, but upon their interpre- 
in the Interpre- tation. For, after all is said and done, every 
tation of Facts .i- i .i ui i. 

tnmker on the race problem, however scien- 
tific and unbiased, consciously or unconsciously brings a 
social philosophy to the interpretation of his facts. He 
puts them on a certain background, and the background 
gives them their color. Any woman can testify that a 
piece of dress goods in the shops does not look as it will 
when it is made up and worn. Its appearance changes with 
its setting. In the laboratory, patches of different colors 
are put upon different backgrounds and are found to take 
on complementary hues. I recall a story with a plot hke 
this : A woman desiring to humiliate her social rival set 
about it by discovering the color of her rival's best frock. 
Then she invited her to a place of ostensible honor at a 
social function and set her over against a background 
which turned her charms into horrors. This is what the 
popular judgment, and frequently social investigators as 
well, have done for the negro. They have put the distress- 
ing facts of his present deficiencies upon the background 

__ 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

of a racial interpretation which makes them look blacker 
than they are. 

The real issue is whether the negro's present deficiencies 
— which certainly doom him if like tendencies hold — are 
The Real inevitable and necessarily permanent, or re- 

Issue mediable and only temporary. Do they be- 

long to the negro as a negro ? Are they due to hereditary 
traits, predestined or unescapable tendencies of blood ; or 
to social handicaps, to conditions which men can control? 
If the latter the negro has a fighting chance, and it is the 
duty of just men to help him in his fight. 

The dominant social doctrine of yesterday held the for- 
mer view and recent champions of the South, with much 
The Failure of ^^^^ ^^ belated learning, still reiterate it. 
Race as an But a revolutionary change meanwhile has 
Explanation come over the science of sociology by which 
an ever-narrowing sphere is allotted to heredity, and an 
ever-increasing sphere ascribed to social control. One of 
the brilliant younger sociologists. Prof. E. A. Ross of 
Wisconsin University (the man who coined the term 
" race suicide," and started a President a-preaching to 
the nation on that evil), summarizing a world-wide sur- 
vey of recent tendencies in sociology, puts the case 
thus : — 

The superiorities that, at a given time, one people 
may display over other peoples, are not necessarily 
racial.^ 

More and more the time-honored appeal to race is 
looked upon as the resource of ignorance or indolence. 
To the scholar the attributing of the mental and 
moral traits of a population to heredity is a confes- 
sion of defeat, not to be thought of until he has 

' Ross, Foundations of Sociology, p. 353. 



A BACKGROUND FOR BLACK 



wrung from every factor of life its last drop of 
explanation.^ 

Note the order of explanation ; for this Is the kernel of 
the thought. We are to cry " race " last of all, after we 
have reckoned with every other factor, every nearer and 
more obvious cause. Then if there is something left of the 
negro's deficiency, which belongs to him as a negro, one 
must confess it ; but not until from every social factor has 
been wrung its last drop of significance. 

In the present issue, merely to set the negro's defi- 
ciencies against their specific sociological background is 
to steal away much of their sharpness. This does not 
mean that the race factor has no influence, but that, when 
the general charge of malign race traits is forced to be- 
come explicit, when each alleged hereditary shortcoming 
is isolated and the nearest and most obvious explanation 
applied to it, the racial residuum, if any, is harmless. 

ra. ALLEGED RACIAL TRAITS AND THEIR SOCIO- 
LOGICAL EXPLANATIONS 

1. The Negroes Inferior Physical Stamina 

Black Americans have a double death-rate. Waiving 
the facts that the statistics on which this conclusion is 
based are inadequate (and the census confesses as much), 
the best conclusion available is that, though the death- 
rates of both are declining, black Americans are now 
dying nearly if not quite twice as fast as white.^ This 

* Ross, Foundations of Sociology, p. 309. 

* Census Bulletin 8, Negroes in the United States, p. 64 ; Willcox, " Census 
Statistics of the American Negro," in Stone, Studies in the American Race 
Problem, pp. 490 ff. 

[rrT] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

proportion holds for the total population and also for 
infants. 

In such cities as Savannah, Georgia, five negroes die to 
every three whites. Considering the most fatal diseases, it 
is found that the negro proportion of death from tuber- 
culosis is three to one ; from marasmus — a wasting dis- 
ease, generally of children — five to three ; from malarial 
fever, five to three ; from pneumonia, two to one. On the 
other hand, it is to be noted that in recent United States 
army examinations of candidates for enlistment negroes 
have made a slightly better showing than whites. A South- 
ern commentator thinks tliis is because military service 
appeals to the best class of negroes, but only to the 
poorer class of whites. Again, it is most pertinent to note 
that extra-excessive mortality is chiefly a city phenome- 
non. Nothing, however, at present known can obviate the 
conclusion that the negro's outlook for health, though not 
hopeless, is extremely dubious. 

This excessive death-rate is by no means overcome, as 
some suppose, by the still more excessive negro birth- 
The Nearo's rate. The birth-rate of both races is declin- 
Double Death- ing, but that of the negro much more 
*'^*® rapidly. 

During the last twenty years of the nineteenth 
century the decline in the proportion of Southern 
negro children was 160 and that in the proportion 
of Southern white children only 75.^ 

While the black population of the South has doubled 
since the Civil War, the white population, virtually without 

' Willcox, "Census Statistics of the Negro," in Stone, Studies in the 
American Race Problem, p. 507. 

[172] 



A BACKGROUND FOR BLACK 



the aid of immigration, has tripled. If this ratio continues 
the negro is doomed to be an ever-diminishing fraction of 
the population. Between 1890 and 1900 the relative in- 
crease in the South Atlantic states was, negro 14 per 
cent, white 20 per cent ; in the South Central states, 
negro 20 per cent, whites 30 per cent. 

The final result, as shown in the relative proportion of 
the race in the South, is, therefore, that the negro is losing 
Racial Inter- ground. What now is the significance of 
pretation of the these facts ? Is it that the negro has an 
Death-rate inferior constitution, that nature made him 

a weakling, that God is responsible and no one can help 
it.'' On the assumption that inferior physical stamina is 
a racial trait. Southern oracles, following a Northerner, 
Prof. W. F. Willcox of Cornell, have prophesied the 
ultimate extinction of the negro in America, It is in- 
teresting, however, to note how vastly the ardor of a 
prophet enlarges the cautious conclusion of the statisti- 
cian. Should the present ratio of increase in the two races 
prevail until 2000 a.d. there would then be in the South 
thirty-three million negroes to one hundred and fifty-five 
million whites, but the negro would constitute only 17.6 
per cent of the population of which he now constitutes 
32.4 per cent. Two thousand a.d. is a long way off, and 
a negro population of 17.6 per cent might still constitute 
a race problem of considerable difficulty. No one can 
safely prophesy whether or not the present ratio of in- 
crease will continue. A good many things are likely to 
happen to modify it. Yet to the author of " The Color- 
Line " it seems certain that " the general movement of the 
life of a continent is toward the elimination of the 
African-American."^ Dr. Smith's jubilation at such a 

' Smith, The Color-Line, p. 21.5. 

[ml 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

divinely ordained result is both sincere and ludicrous ; and 
even a just and generous mind like President Alderman's 
cannot forbear to utter a note of sectional exaltation at the 
alleged prospect. 

Are Professor Smith and President Alderman willing 
to undertake and to work to their legitimate finish per- 
fectly obvious measures tending to defeat their own 
prophesies? A considerable part, at least, of the negro's 
present death-rate is absolutely unnecessary ; its present 
causes are very largely environmental, such as bad sani- 
tation, poor housing, lack of proper clothing and food. 

In the mayor's report of the city of Savannah for 
1906, one reads something like this : " Ours is one of the 
most crowded cities in the South. Its oldest 
districts, especially, furnish too little light 
and air for the health of the people. It is now recognized 
also that the furnishing of means of recreation to its citi- 
zens is part of the function of a modern city. We need 
more parks both for the physical and the moral good of 
the people." But who occupies the more crowded quar- 
ters of old Savannah.? The negro. Is he allowed to use 
the present municipal parks, and will he be admitted to 
the new ones.'' No. A negro or two may pass through a 
park of Savannah, but by unwritten law the negro popu- 
lation is forbidden to make the parks places of recreation. 
They cannot use them for any purpose for which they are 
ordained and supported, partly by negro taxes. Are 
parks for the majority.'' Then they are for the negro. Are 
they for the more needy.'* He is most needy. A Savannah 
negro mother cannot take her child to a park as a relief 
from her stifling alley ; she may take a white child. The 
new municipal playgrounds, for which the mayor pleads, 
will not be available for black boys. A group of colored 

[174] 



A BACKGROUND FOR BLACK 



young people cannot enjoy a picnic there under the sway- 
ing moss of the Hve-oaks ; a gang of colored laborers 
cannot rest there at noontime. Yet the alleys of Savan- 
nah are lined with negro houses. The block in which 
Beach Institute is located, and every block in that region, 
has long rows of disreputable alley tenements, where filth 
and bad sanitation contaminate the air, and menace the 
crowded and racidly increasing colored population. A 
visitor writes, 

The last time I was entertained at the Mission 
Home my colored next-door neighbor emptied her 
dish-water from a window less than six feet from 
my own down into a sunless place between buildings. 
What does Savannah expect.'' Why should not the 
Savannah negro die.'' 

Social investigators have explored such alley homes time 
and time again, and probation officers have followed the 
records of children who come out of them. There is no 
obscurity about their fruits. It is a suggestive fact that 
the municipal jail is not far away. 

Dr. W. F. Brunner, the city health officer, understands 
the case perfectly well and puts it thus: 

We face the following issues: First, one set of 
people, the Caucasian, with a normal death-rate of 
less than sixteen per thousand per annum, and right 
alongside of them is the negro race with a death-rate 
of twenty-five to thirty per thousand. Second: The 
first named race furnishing a normal amount of crimi- 
nals and paupers, and the second race of people fur- 
nishing an abnormal percentage of lawbreakers and 
paupers. 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

Is the negro receiving a square deal? Let a 
commission investigate the houses he hves in : Why, 
in his race, is tuberculosis increasing; why furnishes 
he his enormous quota to the chain-gang and the 
penitentiary ; investigate the industrial insurance 
companies, the money lenders, the instalment furni- 
ture dealers, and, finally, the matter of the surplus 
population, which is a most potent factor in produc- 
ing that class of persons which is dangerous to this 
community and must contaminate its health and 
prosperity. . . . 

The negro is with you for all time. He is what you 
will make him, and it is " up " to the white people to 
prevent him from becoming a criminal and to guard 
him against tuberculosis, syphilis, etc. If he is tainted 
with disease you will suffer; if he develops criminal 
tendencies you will be affected. You cannot observe 
these things without going where he lives in colonies 
in this city. Investigate them, and you will soon 
learn that if he desired to improve his sanitary con^ 
dition he could not do it. Observe the house he must 
live in; the food that he must eat, and learn of all 
his environments. 

This is no sentimental dissertation; it is a state- 
ment of cold-blooded facts that is of as much value to 
the whites as it is to the negroes.^ 

The cemetery is open. The mayor's report takes pains 
to say that, whereas the white portion has been beautified 
with trees and shrubs, the negro portion has been kept 
clean and in good condition, and fenced off and separated 
from the other by a new barbed wire fence, " making each 
portion distinctive," Here the Savannah negro's body is 
laid away after being poisoned to death. There is noth- 

» Mayor's Report, 1907, pp. 162-164. 
__ 



A BACKGROUND FOR BLACK 



ing racial about it. Any one would die who had the same 

kind of experience. 

I know a Charleston alley lined with thirty-two negro 

tenement houses. In the midst of the alley, its sole source 

of water supply, is an open dipping well, 
Charleston i i i • ±_ • i i /^ ii • 

surrounded by a sixteen-mch curb. Un this 

curb all the people of the thirty-two houses do their wash- 
ing. They dip into the well any dish that comes to hand, 
and any contaminated cup from any one of the thirty-two 
families might give disease to all; but specific contamina- 
tion would not make much difference, for the water in the 
well all leaches in from the near-by marshes which are 
dumping-grounds for the city filth. Further interesting 
facts about Charleston are set forth with rather muck- 
rakish fervor in a recent article by Samuel Hopkins 
Adams : 

In the matter of the cisterns, for instance. Charles- 
ton now has a good city water supply fairly free from 
contamination where it starts, and safely filtered be- 
fore it reaches the city. But a great many of " our 
best citizens " prefer their own cisterns, on the grand- 
father principle. These are underground, for most 
part, and are regularly supplied from the roof drain- 
age. Also they are intermittently supplied by leak- 
age from adjacent privy vaults, Charleston having a 
very rudimentary and fractional sewerage system. 
Therefore typhoid is not only logical but inevitable. 
I have no such revolutionary contempt for private 
rights as to deny the privilege of any gentleman to 
drink such form of sewage as best pleases him ; but 
when it comes to supplying the public schools with 
this poison, the affair is somewhat different. Yet, as 
far as the Charleston Board of School Commissioners 
has felt constrained to go, up to date, is this: They 

12 [ 177 ] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

have written to the city physician asking that " oc- 
casional inspection " of the cisterns be made, and 
decorating their absurd request with ornamental 
platitudes. 

With sewage it is the same situation. There is, 
indeed, a primitive sewer system in part of the city, 
but any attempt to extend it meets with a determined 
and time-rooted opposition. The Charlestonians are 
afraid of sewer gas, but apparently have no fear of 
the filth which generates sewer gas ; said filth accumu- 
lated in Charleston's streets subject only to the at- 
tention of the dissipated-looking buzzards, which are 
one of the conservative and local features of the place. 
I have seen these winged scavengers at work. It is 
not an appetizing sight. . . . 

Throughout the South figures and conditions alike 
are complicated by the negro problem. Southern 
cities keep a separate roster of mortalities, one for 
the whites, one for the blacks. In so far as they 
expect to be judged by the white rate alone, this is 
a manifestly unfair procedure, since, allowing for a 
certain racial excess of liability to disease, the negro 
in the South corresponds, in vital statistics, to the 
tenement dweller in the great cities. If New Orleans 
is to set aside its negro mortality, the death-rate 
among those living in the least favorable environ- 
ment, New York should set apart the deaths in the 
teeming rookeries east of the Bowery, the most 
crowded district in the world, and ask to be judged 
on the basis of what remains after that exclusion. 
New York, however, would be glad to diminish the 
mortality in its tenements. ;' New Orleans, Atlanta, 
Charleston, or Savannah would be loath to diminish 
their negro mortality../ That is the frank statement of 
what may seem a brutal fact.-^ 

' McClure's Magazine, vol. xxxi, pp. 250-251. 



A BACKGROUND FOR BLACK 



If your mother, going out to work by the day, left you, 
an infant in the cradle, and a clumsy father, a careless 
Workino- elder sister, or a none too thoughtful neigh- 

Mothers and bor, had the care of you, you might not get 
Dying Infants proper things to eat, nor at the proper 
time. You might die. You would then ornament a sta- 
tistical table, and be pointed out as a racial tendency ; 
perhaps even charged up to the divine decrees. In pro- 
portion to population, more white women work in Fall 
River, Massachusetts, and more white babies die than 
anywhere else in the Union. The negro married woman is 
a breadwinner eight times as frequently as a white mar- 
ried woman, and her infants but follow the white's example. 
Thus the negro's phenomenal death-rate is largely a nec- 
essary consequence of the economic condition of his family. 
Part of the negro's excessive death-rate must certainly 
be credited to the mental effect of the sharp social tran- 
sition which he has undergone since his 
emancipation. Freedom brought new re- 
sponsibilities to which the race was unwonted, 
and the nation made no provision for the 
economic future of the ex-slave. He ceased 
to be a chattel only to become a pauper; but the death 
that he suffers as a poor man must not be credited to 
him as a negro. Its causes are social rather than racial. 
The nation needs to learn that men, including negroes, 
die for lack of hope. Depressed by their unequal struggle 
against poverty and social prejudices, many a black man 
loses all heart to live. Any one who has observed the 
feeble hold on life frequently exhibited by negro students 
will be convinced that the causes of death are largely men- 
tal. Life simply does not hold out sufficient incentive to 
keep breath in the body. Southern observers have fre- 



The Effects of 
Sudden Transi 
tion, and of 
Discourage- 
ment 



[179] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

quently noted the loss of cheerfulness since the emancipa- 
tion, and have credited it to the negro's incapacity to 
meet the responsibilities of freedom. To me it seems 
rather an unnecessary tragedy growing out of social prej- 
udice. It is the rebujff of his aspiration by the white man 
which discourages the negro to death. 

The part which vice plays in the death-rate is by no 
means to be minimized, and it has not been either by the 
Vice and the negro or his Northern friends. A majority 
Death-rate of the rejections of candidates for enlist- 

ment in the army was on account of venereal diseases. 
Immorality is an arch enemy of the race. Nevertheless, 
the zeal of the moral teacher may easily overstate the 
fact and miss the remedy. It will not do to assume that 
vice is a racial trait. Perhaps, like death, it may be traced 
to specific causes. However ominous, it is still preventable. 

Now when one subtracts the deaths which are due to 
poverty, to bad sanitation and to preventable diseases ; 
The Racial those which are due to social hardships 
Residuum which brotherliness may overcome ; and 

those which are due to vice which the race may conquer, 
how much is left as a general racial residuum indicating 
inferior physical stamina in the negro as such? C / • 

With respect to America as a physical environment, I 
believe we should admit that his deficiency is partially 
racial, in that the negro is only partially adapted to it. 
The mouth of the Mississippi is eighteen hundred miles 
north of the mouth of the Niger — as far as from New 
Orleans to Manitoba. When any people cross an ocean, 
even on the same isotherm, the new country puts it through 
a physical sifting. There are new diseases as well as new 
social conditions. Every migration is a selective crisis; 
how much more a migration accompanied by an extreme 

[180] 



A BACKGROUND FOR BLACK 



climatic change as that from Africa to America? The 
race as a whole has not been here long enough to complete 
its physical sifting. Slaves still filtered in even to the out- 
break of the Civil War, and slavery, which sifted its vic- 
tims barbarously along other lines, screened them some- 
what from nature's stern work.^ No people has ever been 
saved wholesale, and the negro cannot expect to be, espe- 
cially as he expands his geographical range, as in his 
present rapid migrations. In the cities of the North, he 
is subject to a fierce climatic sifting. Thus his death- 
rate in Chicago and Newark is almost as bad as it is in the 
less sanitary Southern cities. Social causes of mortality 
are reenforced by geographical causes there. On the 
other hand, the negro already has a physical advantage in 
the hotter, moister, and lower parts of the South. With 
respect to these environments, it is the white man who is 
sub j ect to a climatic sifting ; and, of the two, the negro has 
probably the greater capacity for acclimatization. Ross 
thinks " lack of adaptability a handicap, which the white 
man must ever bear in competing with black, yellow, or 
brown men,"^ and calls our race "physiologically inelastic." 
Again, the sifting of the negro by his new responsi- 
bilities as freedman is equally inevitable. Brotherliness, 
we argue, could prevent some of the deaths from hopeless- 
ness, but no one can guarantee, nor should be led to expect, 
that the whole race should be able to adapt itself to the 
part of freemen in a strenuous civilization. Of Israel's 
captivity also it was written, " A remnant shall return." 
The conclusion would seem to be that social justice could 
cut down the excessive negro death-rate largely, but not 
entirely. 

* See Tillinghast, The Negro in Africa and America, ch. iv. 
' Ross, The Foundations of Sociology, p. 3.58. 

Tisn 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

I am afraid that social justice, which is still lacking for 
the poor white, will not reach the negro very soon. As- 
The Physical suming only a slow and gradual improve- 
Future of the ment of conditions, what do the facts suggest 
Negro g^g ^Q i\^Q probable future of his race in 

America? Do they necessarily indicate the negro's ex- 
tinction here? Will justice come too late to save him? I 
do not think so. The present excessive death-rate might 
mean the creation of a new racial variety through natural 
selection and the survival of the stronger. If one alterna- 
tive is extinction, another equally good is the emergence 
from this sifting of a better negro than the world ever saw 
before.^ Why is the Anglo-Saxon stronger than other 
races? What is the secret of his superiority? It is that 
so many of his race are dead. At some time in the past, 
and more than once, he had a highly excessive death-rate 
which killed off weaklings and left a stock stronger than 
the original variety. We have been sifted more frequently 
and more sternly than any other people ; consequently we, 
the remnant, are in some respects better than they. We 
could still be improved by the same grim method. Our race 
would be stronger if more of us were dead, but the con- 
science of Christendom revolts from such a policy of im- 
provement. By sanitation, medicine, philanthropy, the 
moral sense insists upon keeping alive the otherwise unfit. 
Enough suffering remains to wring our hearts but not 
enough to better our stock. From the negro alone, hith- 
erto, have been withlield the remedial resources of American 
civilization ; consequently his is probably the only Ameri- 
can group which is getting any constitutional good out of 
his tragedy. Its death-rate is actually so excessive that 
it may well be physically selective. Perhaps we should 
' Giddings, Independent, February 14, 1906, p. 383. 

[182 1 



A BACKGROUND FOR BLACK 



read in its grim statistics a story of the evolution of a 
more resistant type which, instead of being exterminated, 
will help to people the nation with a posterity adapted 
both to our climate and to our civilization. This is at 
least as safe a prophecy as that of extinction. Add to 
this, too, that, if the white population continues to pros- 
per more rapidly than the negro, it will continue to be 
more subject to the decreased birth-rate which always fol- 
lows upon an advancing standard of living. With the in- 
creasing wealth of their section. Southern whites, who 
hitherto have had large families, will commit race suicide, 
— and faster than the negro does. Thus the more re- 
sistant negro of the future may for a time multiply faster 
than the white and his race continue to bear as large a 
proportion in the general population as at present. At 
any rate, it is the part of common justice to eliminate all 
preventable social factors of the negro's physical inferi- 
ority, and with faith in both races to allow Providence to 
provide for the future. 

2. The Negro's Precarious Economic Position 

A fair and conservative statement of the facts as statis- 
tically indicated is given by Prof. W. F. Willcox: 

In the industrial competition thus begun, the negro 
seems during the last decade to have slightly lost 
ground in most of those higher occupations in which 
the services are rendered largely to whites. He has 
gained in the two so-called learned professions of 
teachers and clergymen. He has gained in the two 
skilled occupations of miner or quarryman and iron 
or steel-worker. He has gained in the occupations, 
somewhat ill-defined so far as the degree of skill re- 
quired is indicated, as sawing-mill or planing-mill em- 

fissl 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

ployee, and nurse or midwife. He has gained in the 
class of servants and waiters. On the other side of 
the balance sheet he has lost ground in the South as 
a whole in the following skilled occupations : car- 
penter, barber, tobacco and cigar factory operative, 
fisherman, engineer or fireman (not locomotive), and 
probably blacksmith. He has lost ground also in the 
following industries, in which the degree of skill im- 
plied seems somewhat uncertain: laundry work, hack- 
man or teamster, steam railroad employee, house- 
keeper or steward. The balance seems not favorable. 
It suggests that in the competition with white labor 
to which the negro is being subjected he has not quite 
held his own.^ 

The racial interpretation of these facts is that the in- 
born indolence of Africa sleeps in the negro's blood. 
Racial Laziness is a virtue in the tropics. Nature 

Interpretation there selects the languid to survive. The 
negro simply lacks the inborn impulse to work with the 
degree of energy which is normal for the white man. A 
table of economic vices and virtues may thus be drawn out 
as racial contrasts. The white worker is energetic ; the 
negro lazy. The white worker is self-reliant; the negro 
servile. The white worker is reliable ; the negro is child- 
ishly unaccountable. The white worker is thrifty ; the 
negro utterly lacks a " compelling vision of the future." 
This contrast, it should be noted, incidentally takes grave 
liberties with the facts about Africa. That great conti- 
nent does not all lie in the banana belt. It has temperate 
table-lands which conduce to energy and it has millions by 
no means living without working.^ Prof. N. S. Shaler, 

* American Race Problems, pp. 493-494. 

^ See Dowd, Negro Races, ch. xxxix, for a description and comparison of 
the different African "zones." 

f 184 1 



A BACKGROUND FOE BLACK 



Kentuckian and Harvard professor, and Judge Emory 
Speer, of Georgia, justify their relatively high estimate of 
certain American negro types on the very ground of 
heredity. Some, they think, are descended from superior 
African groups whose native environment made for vigor 
and foresight. It seems hkely, however, that the majority 
of the forbears of the American negro came from less 
favorable parts of Africa. Following the clue of inborn 
laziness into the future, many reputable Southern the- 
orists, and with them some notable Northern authorities, 
predict his complete economic displacement. President 
Alderman, following Hoffman, argues that the negro can- 
not long hold the land which he already owns, while Alfred 
Holt Stone is convinced that immigrant labor, whenever it 
comes, will displace him as tenant farmer in the South. 
The prejudice and increasing competition of organized 
white labor is said to narrow and threaten his hold on in- 
dustry even where he has hitherto had an undisputed labor 
monopoly. Thus, on all sides, his outlook is dark. 
" Whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even 
that he hath." 

We will fall back upon the racial explanation if we must ; 
but remembering Professor Ross' warning, we would not 
Social be so cowardly or indolent as to resort to 

Alternatives it before we have exhausted the meaning of 
more obvious causes. We must first wring from every 
social explanation its last drop of significance. 

Since this man is dying twice as fast as we, it would be 
natural that the physical weakness which is killing him 
should make him drag before he dies. He who is about to 
die with a double death-rate will not be able to work with 
normal energy. So much is self-evident. 

And whether the negro is a good worker or not, he is a 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTEUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

worker in larger proportion than any other race. The 
ratio of breadwinners among Southern negroes exceeds 
Effects of Child ^^^^ among Southern whites by 15 per cent 
and Mother and chiefly in three classes, women, children, 
and old men, the excessive labor of women 
accounting for three-quarters of the difference. In pro- 
portion twice as many colored boys are breadwinners as 
white, five times as many colored girls as white, four 
times as many colored women as white, eight times as many 
colored married women as white, while 25 per cent more 
old negro men drag out their working lives after the years 
at which white men retire. 

Now when such things are true, the outcome is obvious. 
The child laborer is one who robs his own manhood of 
energy. He uses up vitality now which should have been 
reserved to make his maturity strong. All of the sluggish- 
ness and much of the mental deficiency of the negro is due 
to the too heavy burdens put upon his childhood. What 
happens when mothers work-f^ Their children are robbed. 
Unborn children come into the world weakened and con- 
tinue undernourished. Both the mother who must be the 
breadwinner, and also feed and attend her child, and the 
child who is born of that working mother, will drag their 
ways through life. The labor of white mothers and chil- 
dren is recognized as a social evil which stirs the conscience 
and arouses sympathy. Its result are perfectly well under- 
stood. The labor of negro women and children is taken 
for granted as part of their divinely ordained law and the 
results charged to racial deficiency. The old man who 
drags his decaying body through the fomns of work is an 
additional example of the negro's alleged indolence. 

But the physical aspect of the case is not the chief one. 
The social opportunity allowed the negro has not fur- 



A BACKGROUND FOR BLACK 



nished him with adequate motive to labor. Why do we, 
who possess normal energies, work? Because prizes are 
Lack of Social set before us. Experience, sociology, and 
Incentive common sense unite to declare that the real 

incentives to make men effective laborers are incentives of 
possible promotion, of social gain. A ladder is set before 
us and we are told that if we cHmb there is something 
for us at the top. The appeal may be to a sordid earthly 
ambition or to a high and noble ambition ; it must be to 
some sort of ambition. Only for a prize set before him 
will a man contend with all his might. 

Why is it that the peasantry of Europe do not work 
as those very peasants do when they come to America.'' 
Here they receive miraculous new energy. They keep step 
with our best progress ; their children rise to the highest 
places — to governorships, and seats in Congress, and 
the Cabinet — and why.? Simply because the social sys- 
tem in the Old World gave the peasant no opportunity, 
while the New World fills him with inspiration. Now the 
lot of the negro mi the South, ^as of the peasant in Europe, 0n^iA^ 
is one of repression through social prejudice. He is pushed ^4^«^$fc. 
on the far side of a color-line, within which there is no ^'^ <^ 
adequate incentive. Man does not live nor strive for bread 
alone. His full manhood will hear nothing less than 
some high calling. 

To make the case specific, the most damaging com- 
plaints about the negro as a laborer relate to the plan- 
The Case of tation hand of the lower South. Why is he 
the Plantation worse than other negroes.'' Because he lives 
Negro under a worse economic system, a system of 

forced labor, while in the cities, the factories, and in the 
agricultural uplands the negro is under the ordinary wage 
system. 

[1871 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

The South declares that the negro will not work without 
compulsion and has shaped its policy accordingly. Iso- 
lated cases of men kept at forced labor by the blood- 
hound and the shotgun are of small moment compared 
with laws denying the fundamental principles of the rela- 
tion of free labor to its employers. The proof of peonage 
is not a matter of convicting this or that planter, but of 
analyzing the economic legislation of the South. The mass 
of negroes there live under a system expressly devised 
and intended to hold them to the soil. Their debts are 
legally collectable through forced labor, as no poor man's 
debts are collected anywhere else under civilization. Run- 
ning away from one's job, which in the North would be 
called " striking," a privilege guarded as the laborer's 
most essential prerogative, is in the South made a crime 
punishable by compulsory service.^ 

A special report on the Federal peonage investigations. 
Peonage made in December, 1907, by Assistant Attor- 

lavestigations ney-General Russell, characterizes the legal 
basis of these oppressions as follows: 

These state laws take various forms and are used 
in various ways to uphold peonage and other kinds 
of involuntary servitude. Some of them are vagrancy 
laws, some contract labor or employment laws, some 
fraudulent pretense or false promise laws, and there 
are divers others. Some few of them in question, such 
as absconding debtor laws, labor enticing, and board- 
bill laws, were not originally intended to enslave work- 
men, but in view of the uses to which they are put 
they need amendment in order that they cannot be 
so abused. 

These laws are used to threaten workmen, who, 
' See Commons, Races and Immigrants in America, pp. 135-136. 



A BACKGROUND FOR BLACK 



having been defrauded into going to an employer by 
false reports as to the conditions of employment and 
the surroundings, naturally become dissatisfied. They 
are used before juries and the local public to hold 
peons up as lawbreakers and dishonest persons seek- 
ing to avoid their "just obligations," and to con- 
vince patriotic juries that the persons accused of 
peonage should not be convicted for enforcing, still 
less for threatening to enforce, the laws of their 
state. 

Whether constitutional or unconstitutional, they 
should all be wiped out or amended so as to be harm- 
less for the purpose of enslaving workmen. 

In view of this report a Florida representative shrieked 
in Congress: 

My God, what an affliction ! Charles W, Russell, a 
Southern man and a Democrat. " It is a dirty bird 
which befouls its own nest." 

Perhaps the Supreme Court of South Carolina is also an 
" affliction." It recently pronounced unconstitutional the 
labor contract laws of its state, declaring that the laborer 
cannot legally be punished for mere evasion of debt, but 
only if it can be proved that he entered into debt with 
" intent to defraud," A considerable part of the legis- 
lative session of 1908 was given to devising a new bill 
which should be " proof against Federal laws " and also 
" meet the demands of the farmers, who were considerably 
upset by the recent decision of Judge Brawley of said 
Supreme Court," ^ To this sectional attempt to secure 
his labor by compulsion rather than by incentive, the 
> Columbia State, February 4, 1908. 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

laborer has responded exactly as he should, by poor and 
grudging service. Hence the economic condemnation of 
the plantation negro. 

On the other hand, if one should actually take a poll 
to-day of the industrial employers of the South, they 
Industrial Em- ^'o^ld vote in favor of the negro as the best 
ployers favor laborer that they have, or think they could 
the Negro gg^^ 'pjjg negro on the farm is very widely 

condemned; in the industries very largely approved, as 
every investigation by Southerners has borne witness. 
Comprehensive inquiries were made in 1899, 1900, and 
1901 by a leading industrial journal, The Chattanooga 
Tradesman, the results of which (as even Hoffman grudg- 
ingly admits ^ ) were " on the whole favorable to the negro 
as an industrial worker." He adds : " The significance 
of it is that so many should favor the negro as an indus- 
trial worker in view of the fault that is found with him 
as an agricultural laborer." - But the employer simply 
declares the facts as he knows them. Mr. O. J. Hill, of 
the Barrel Trust, tells me that their single plant, oper- 
ated exclusively by negro labor, runs more days in the 
year than any plant operated by white employees. I at- 
tended in Nashville the great Immigration Conference, 
along with six or seven Southern governors and repre- 
sentatives from every state and industry of that section. 
The burden of proof in that conference was upon the 
partisans of white, and especially of Italian immigrant 
labor as against negro labor ; and the South was not con- 
vinced. A mass of testimony and the great preponder- 
ance of opinion was that the negro is the very best laborer 
available for the South to-day. In fact, I never before 

• "Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro," p. 278. 
« Ibid., p. 273. 

-_ 



A BACKGROUND FOR BLACK 



found the race in danger of the woe which impends " when 
all men speak well of you." 

Mr. A. H. Stone, the great advocate of the Italian as 
a substitute for the negro in agriculture, confesses that 
The Reason he does not expect " any sudden revolution 
Why in Southern agricultural and industrial con- 

ditions. . . . Thousands, I might say hundreds of thou- 
sands, of Southern white men prefer the negro under any 
and all circumstances to any class of white labor." ''■ But 
this attitude Mr. Stone thinks is mere inertia. He him- 
self has had very poor luck with negro labor on a Mis- 
sissippi plantation. It does not occur to him that the con- 
flicting conclusions of agricultural and industrial employers 
may be due to the fact that negroes respond differently to 
a system of compulsion and a system of incentive. Yet 
it seems perfectly clear that wherever the black man has 
escaped from the old, oppressive, feudalistic system of 
forced labor and come under the plain and none too perfect 
wage-system, the result has been a quality of laborer who 
on the testimony of his employers is very satisfactory. 

Yet even in the industries much is lacking of normal 
Incomplete incentive to the negro. He frequently re- 

Incentive in receives unequal wage for equal work. Thus 
Industry Prof. John R. Commons writes : 

I have made comparisons of the pay-rolls of two 
,gas works in Southern cities — one employing negro 
stokers at eleven cents an hour and the other whites 
at twenty-two cents an hour, and both working twelve 
hours a day seven days a week. The negroes put in 
as many hours between pay-days as did the whites, 
and if they " laid off " after pay-day, it is no more 
than any class of white workmen would do after two 
' American Race Problems, p. 175. 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

weeks of such exhausting work. The negro in the 
Southern cities can scarcely hope to rise above twelve 
cents an hour, and white mechanics have a way of 
working with negro helpers at ten cents an hour in 
order to lift their own wages to twenty cents an hour. 
White wage-earners and white employers in the South 
speak of the negro's efforts to get higher wages in 
the same words and tones as employers in the North 
speak of white wage-earners who have organized 
unions and demanded more pay. A foreman con- 
demned his " niggers " for instability when they were 
leaving him at ten cents an hour for a railroad job 
at twelve and one-half cents an hour. Praising the 
Italians in comparison with the negro, he could not 
think of paying seventeen and one-half cents an hour 
for pick and shovel work, which Italians were said to 
be getting in another section of the state. The right 
to quit work is the right to get higher wages. If the 
higher wages are paid and proper treatment accorded, 
a process of natural selection ensues. The industri- 
ous and steady workmen of all races retain the jobs. 
The gas company referred to above, by a system of 
graded pay advancing with years of service, had 
sorted out a more steady and reliable force of negroes 
than they could have secured of whites at the rate of 
wages paid. The test is indeed a severe one where a 
race has always been looked upon as servile. With 
high wages regarded as " white man's wages," the 
process of individual selection does not work out, and 
the dominant race excuses its resort to whipping, 
beating, and peonage on the ground of the laziness 
which its methods of remuneration have not learned 
to counterbalance. Even the industrious Italians 
treated in this way would not be industrious — they 
would leave for other states.^ 

' Races and Immigrants in America, pp. 139-140. 

[192 1 



A BACKGROUND FOR BLACK 



Manifestly, then, there is a good deal to be subtracted' 
from the negro's reputation as a poor worker before it 
can justly be charged to racial tendencies. 

What is true of the charge of laziness is true of every 
other charge of economic deficiency. The negro does not 
The Negro tend by racial instinct to enter servile call- 
not Servile ings. Numerically speaking, the represen- 
tative of the race in America is not a menial but a farmer. 
Its proved losses in some of the skilled trades and alleged 
gravitation to the lower forms of service is directly trace- 
able to a peculiar economic situation. On the one hand, 
the old independent, all-round artisan, white or black, is 
gradually disappearing. His work is taken over by the 
factory and done by machinery under a minute special- 
ization of processes. White as well as negro carpenters 
have decreased during the last decade. The white arti- 
san's son, however, follows his father's job into the fac- 
tory and does part of the old work there under another 
name. But the factory is the stronghold of organized 
labor, and when a negro makes the same attempt he is 
repulsed by the color-line in the union. This does not 
prove that with a fair field, as a man and a producer, he 
also might not have achieved his economic transformation. 
If he now falls back on the servile callings, it is because 
he is pushed down by man, not pulled down by his own 
nature. 

Then, on the other hand, with the remarkable growth 
of American wealth and luxury, there has been a vast in- 
Competition of urease in the demand for personal service, 
the Low-grade It is no discredit to the negro that he enters 
Immigrant these open doors when others are shut to him. 

As a matter of fact, he is not entering them so fast as 
foreign whites are. They are actually ousting him from 

13 [193] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

janitor's, bootblack's, and pedler's work.^ Another evi- 
dence, then, of the negro's economic incapacity? Well, 
when immigrants come over to compete with our white 
labor, the cry goes up that the sacred American standard 
of living is attacked. It is not considered an economic 
virtue to be able to compete with men on a lower scale of 
subsistence. The displacement of successive races in the 
New England mills is regarded as a fall upward. But 
when a Mississippi planter, studying the Italian in his 
own land as a possible substitute for the negro on the 
Southern farm, reports, " Their diet was simple and in- 
expensive — a Southern plantation negro would scorn to 
accept a similar ration," ^ the negro is condemned in the 
next breath as lacking economic strength because they 
drive him from his job. So would they drive the white 
American were he not bulwarked by organization and 
public sentiment. Denied these defenses, the skilled negro 
has been underlived, precisely because he had the prime 
economic virtue, a relatively high standard of subsistence. 
In his turning this way and that to escape his economic 
handicaps and to find or make a chance, the negro has 
Gains in exhibited a mobility and resourcefulness which 

Mobility completely overthrow the charge of servil- 

ity. He is called a " slave to local attachments " ; when 
he disproves it by coming to the city in increasing num- 
bers and by scattering over the continent in search of 
work, he is blamed for instability and a childish taking 
of risks. The fact is that he has developed what all 
theorists hold to be another of the chief economic virtues, 
namely, a wide industrial outlook and a quick command 

* Stone, American Race Problems, p. 157. 

^ Manufacturer's Record, November 9, 1905, quoted by Stone in Ameri- 
can Race Problems, p. 194. 

[194] 



A BACKGROUND FOR BLACK 



of the entire country as his labor market. This new 
migrant habit exposes him to numerous moral dangers, 
but it expresses practical good sense. 

In addition to this new economic mobility the great 
resources of group economy, previously discussed, have 
Growing been most skilfully used by the negro as 

Racial Pride an escape from ruinous competition of low- 
standard whites. On his own side of the color-line he has 
proved himself capable of well-nigh limitless expansion. 
His dominant mood is anything but servile. Latter-day 
efforts at self-development even tend to be too impatient 
of friendly guidance. Already the outstanding charac- 
teristics of the American negro are not dependence but 
growing racial pride and purpose. 

We have called mobility a virtue; yet it is just the 
younger generation of American city-going negroes which 
The Psvchol- ^^ credited with the most vexatious of eco- 
ogy of Ineffi- nomic vices, unreliability, and inefficiency, 
ciency 'p}^g experience of the North with this class 

tends to make it sympathetic with the South's injured, 
discouraging wail, " As a worker the negro is deteriorat- 
ing." It is an easy, but also a cheap, explanation to 
ascribe this alleged tendency to malign African charac- 
teristics, the essential unaccountability of a childish race, 
temperamentally unfit for freedom. The South is the less 
to blame for such a view because it is economically pro- 
vincial; it lacks experience with any other laboring class 
than the negro. The North, however, has only to com- 
pare him with other immigrants to discover that he ex- 
hibits identical traits with theirs. Every group under- 
going \'iolent industrial transition and newly entered upon 
enlarged opportunity experiences transitional maladies. 
They belong to the immigrant as an economic type 

fl95l 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

whether he be white or black. The psychology of the 
unsatisfactory worker has been keenly analyzed by Prof. 
Simon N. Patten : 

It is composed of the hundreds of thousands of 
workers who have reached with a bound the line of 
full nutrition, the way having been cleared for them 
by the insatiable demand for men to handle the in- 
rushing wealth of America's resources. Placed in a 
young, industrial civilization, their advance has been 
so swift and urgent that social restraints have fallen 
from them ; they have broken old habits of fealty to 
bonds ; they have forgotten the sympathies that made 
good service to employers a virtue to be sought, and 
they have not attained new industrial traits that make 
work enjoyable. They have been changed from drilled 
and dutiful beings to raw recruits of an economic 
freedom, which to them is complete because in the ex- 
ercise of it they for the first time gratify their wants 
and keep pace with their material desires. Their em- 
ployers and other observers characterize them as hav- 
ing an unreliable, undisciplined independence in their 
industrial relationships — these half-skilled mechan- 
ics, grocers, clerks, butchers, barbers, household cooks, 
domestics, and the rest of the army of the wasteful, 
ineffective, and indifferent. It is said of them that 
they render unsatisfactory service and shirk tlie equiv- 
alent of their wages because they can find new places 
with less effort than they can do their work in the 
old ones. They are generally inefficient, yet always 
in demand, unskilful, yet reasonably sure of employ- 
ment; and thus fortified they have become the peri- 
patetics of industry. Their obvious value to society 
gives them an independence which is not justified by 
their power of initiative, and a mobility which is 
without thoughtful far-seeing pui*pose ; they have 

[YdT] 



A BACKGROUND FOR BLACK 



fallen into a period of arrest because they are satis- 
fied with a status in which their gratifications are 
flush with their wants. They are for the moment 
without motives to work well; in the first place they 
" owe nothing," they say, to the chance stranger who 
bespeaks them ; and in the second, their conscious and 
simple needs are so amply met that reasons for work- 
ing well are lacking. 

Of this class was a woman who took a position as 
highly paid cook in a family of two. When she proved 
to be frankly untrained and incapable, and was taxed 
with false pretenses, she said with hurt dignity, " You 
got a pair of hands to wash some of your dishes for 
you, and I have seen ladies waiting a long time for 
that." 1 

The above-mentioned cook may well have been a negro ; 
but Professor Patten is not thinking about negroes. He 
points out everywhere a class of economically disappoint- 
ing laborers who have broken away from old standards 
and not yet become adjusted to a new freedom. This is 
a world problem, and the South would find such alleged 
*' nigger " traits in any laboring race which it might im- 
port in any numbers. 

The presence of hordes of negro vagrants in Its streets 
is one of the South's chief complaints. Upon retiring 
Economic from twelve years' service on the police bench 

Origin of the of Savannah, Judge Norwood made one of 
Negro Vagrant f}^Q bitterest of recent attacks on the colored 
race. He charged that Savannah had from five to eight 
thousand of such vagrants, whose shiftlessness and im- 
morality he attempted to explain by a detailed statement 
of the condition of the negro in Africa. Apparently he 
* The New Basis of Civilization, pp. 80-81. 

[wT] ■ 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

knew more about Africa than about Savannah. Here is 
the third greatest seaport in the South and the world's 
greatest center for the shipment of naval stores. To-day 
it requires thousands of unskilled laborers to load and un- 
load the cars and ships. Should one or two hundred be 
lacking they would be telegraphed for and brought down 
from Atlanta before dinner. To-morrow thej^ will need but 
one half as many — for such are the irregularities of 
industry — and the rest must stand idle in the market- 
place because no man has hired them. On Sunday they 
will all be in the streets and alleys — the parks being 
closed to them — homeless, irresponsible, idle men. Com- 
pared with London dockers and Hong Kong coolies they 
may be quite amiable citizens, but Savannah does not 
know enough to compare them with their economic type. 
It ascribes all their shortcomings to negro blood. As a 
matter of fact they are a direct creation of modern in- 
dustrial conditions which require an irregular supply of 
unskilled labor. This constitutes always and everywhere 
a difficult and dangerous class. 

3. The Negro's Excessive Immorality 

The facts concerning negro crime are various and per- 
plexing. However, the more general statistics are clear 
enough. His prison population is two and one-half times 
his proportion to the general population of the nation. 

In a typical Southern city, like Savannah, with a little 
larger negro population than white, three negroes are 
arrested to one white man. Vice is essentially incapable of 
statistical measurement. In the most reputable of South- 
ern circles one hears the confident charge that a pure negro 
woman does not exist. As measured by statistics of ille- 



A BACKGROUND FOR BLACK 



gitimacy, the race's sad preeminence in unchastity is un- 
deniable. Vice and crime are alike excessive. Yet one 
must not immediately give them racial explanation. Is 
it that the negro is bestial.'' One cannot so conclude until 
he has wrung from every other explanation its least 
significance. 

Is there any reason why a man who dies twice as fast 
as normal men do — a man who is a poor worker — 
Virtue has a should also be a criminal,'' There are at 
Physical Basis least some reasons ; one is that virtue has 
a physical basis. He who is weak against disease is apt 
to be weak against temptation. 

It is well recognized that city conditions exact a moral 
penalty of the poor man, who is forced to herd with the 
The Compul- bad man. Social stratification uniformly 
sory Herding segregates the unfortunate and the evil 
Lite wiih 'the from the good. Geographically poverty and 
Debased crime are neighbors ; physically they are in 

immediate contact, and their victims cannot help it. In 
many a Southern city the negro's best institutions are 
crowded into the same areas with the white's worst; the 
school is located in the same block with the brothel. 

Suppose one's mother locks one up in the house when 
she goes off to work in the morning ; or suppose she leaves 
Crime due to ^^^ ^° S^^ ^^^ ^^^ breakfast and then to go 
Neglect of to school, if he pleases and if there is a 

Childhood school (half of the 8000 negro school chil- 

dren of Savannah have neither seat, book, nor teacher, 
and cannot go to school if they would) ; or suppose one 
of tender years takes the only opportunity of breadwin- 
ning open to a negro boy, a menial position in a hotel, 
store, or office, where he sees men in their coarser, away- 
from-home moods ; or suppose that the park is forbidden 

[1991 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

to the child at play and he is driven into the alley ; what 
result should be expected? This is the average lot of the 
negro child's life. We know that to neglect his white 
brother is a sure means of making a criminal of him, but 
of the negro we think, as did the Tennessee " mammy " 
in a recent book by a Southern author, " Hit don't hurt 
niggers none to tote things too heavy for 'um." So 
America seems to think. It then wonders that the negro 
child becomes a delinquent, whom our medieval law mis- 
takenly classes as a criminal. The explanation is clear; 
it is not racial, but social. 

Suppose the lot of the white girl were that of the 
negro girl. In the first place, curiously, the race has 
The Lot of ^n abnormal proportion of women. There 
the Negro Girl is an especial oversupply of them in the 
cities, and their economic opportunities are extremely 
narrow. Domestic service is almost their only means of 
breadwinning ; consequently economically, as well as so- 
cially, negro women are cheap. Social custom in the 
South is that a house servant shall not sleep under the 
same roof with her mistress. She is provided for in ser- 
vants' quarters in the backyard — often over a stable. 
There hve men and women servants without social or 
moral supervision. It is their parlor as well as their bed- 
room. What company they have they must have there. 
The superintendent of schools in one of the chief Southern 
cities, a Northern man, has told me about the tragical 
and unsuccessful struggle made by himself and his wife 
to keep their own premises from being a place of de- 
bauchery. Yet does any one suppose that the conse- 
quences would be different with any group of young people 
under like circumstances, especially under a common social 
sentiment that a woman's virtue is worthless .? They would 

[200] 



A BACKGROUND FOR BLACK 



go wrong were they our own sons and daughters. Yet 
the negro girl is a breadwinner five times as frequently 
as the white girl, and these are the typical circumstances 
under which she must make her struggle both for self- 
support and for character. 

The instability of the negro family, too, its excessive 
marital infidelity and frequent divorce, are due to specific 
The Instability social causes. A considerable proportion of 
of the Negro the race is, in economic status, below the 
Family a jjj^g q£ family continuity," as the economist 

calls it. Why do better class families persist.'* Because 
of the superior virtue of their members.? Only partly. 
The deeper explanation is that they have become estab- 
lished in a domestic scheme in which the prolongation of 
infancy compels family solidarity. Children do not be- 
come financially independent until full grown ; the wife 
and daughters have no preparation for breadwinning ; 
they are permanent dependents. The component parts 
of such a family must stick together in order to survive. 
Reduce its income by one-half or three-quarters and note 
what happens. The children are forced into breadwin- 
ning at a tender age, and income-bringing employment 
becomes the permanent and expected lot of mother and 
daughters. There can be but little home life. Day by 
day each member goes to his own appointed task ; each 
as an independent worker is self-sufficient. The group 
has no outward compression to reenforce its inner cohe- 
sion. It is economically unstable. Consequently it fre- 
quently falls apart. All homes on this level, of whatever 
race, show the same weakness. The negro is no sinner 
above all the Galileans. 

Savannah complains of its five to eight thousand negro 
" vagrants," whom we Identified above as merely irregu- 



201] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

lar workers, drawn together by the industrial demands of 
a great seaport, and showing all the marks of a well- 
Creation of known social type. Savannah charges them 
Criminals by to the negro as a race. What her industry 
Industry creates, her law in turn brands as criminal. 

To be an irregular worker — to have no permanent home 
or j ob — to have been brought down this morning from 
Atlanta in response to the call of a captain of industry, 
— to do necessary labor on terms not of your own choos- 
ing — is to be at outs with the law. Chiefly on account 
of this class the arrests of negroes in Savannah are nearly 
three times as frequent as those of whites, but two-thirds 
of these negro arrests are either for vagrancy, drunken- 
ness, or disorderly conduct. All these go down in the 
statistical tables of the census against the race ; but 
when the census bulletin turns to interpret its own statis- 
tics, it says explicitly that such minor offenses should not 
be called crimes at all. Two-thirds of the excessive negro 
criminality of Savannah is simply criminality by definition. 
The social inconvenience of Savannah on account of her 
negroes is due almost wholly to arbitrary, abnormal city 
conditions, such as crowding and the denial of parks to 
them, to the demands of industry for irregular work- 
men, and to a misunderstanding of the nature of crime. 
It is no just measurement of the negro as a social 
menace. 

Of the unequal administration of criminal law between 
the races, which all competent observers note, the Southern 
Criminality by press itself sometimes testifies in moments of 
Administration disgusted candor. Witness the following 
from the Nashville American of March 12, 1908: 



202] 



A BACKGROUND FOR BLACK 



NEGROES AND FEE GRABBERS 

Is the repeated arrest of negroes congregated 
around barrooms and other resorts by county offi- 
cers in the interest of morahty, or merely a well- 
defined scheme to secure fees? It strikes us many of 
these so-called raids are without warrant, and made 
for no other purpose than to line the pockets of the 
raiders. Worthless, idle negroes engaged in offenses 
against the state should be arrested, of course, but 
practically few arrests are made in the interest of 
law and order. 

The fee grabber, as a matter of fact, is no better 
than the negro who has to pay the fee. One is as 
immoral as the other. 

It is also said there are justices of the peace who 
have more interest in the fees they may secure from 
the arrested than in promoting law and morals. 

The American has no patience with lawbreakers, 
white or black, nor has it any with the fee grabbers. 
It also feels that many negroes are arrested where 
white men equally guilty are never bothered. The 
fee grabbers should treat all alike, and not do a lot 
of raiding merely for the money there is in it. 

As pastor in a border city, I had six years In which to 
study the relation between the city administration and 
the vicious element of negroes. The police studied to a 
nicety how much money a negro washerwoman could make, 
and then proceeded to arrest her husband, brother, father, 
son, or the man she lived with, as the case might be, just 
as often as she could pay their fines. Of course the men 
were drunken, boisterous, disorderly, but the vicious whites 
were not arrested in any such systematic way, and the 
policy pursued with the vicious negro in no sense had as 

[ 203 ] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

its motive the protection of the community. Under the 
fee system the policeman who made the arrest, the pohce 
judge, his clerk, the jailer, and every other official con- 
nected with the case, got a " rake-off." It was legal 
grafting. The negro washerwoman washed for the city 
officials ; they took her money under the guise of enforce- 
ment of the law. It was as regular as wash-day, as legal 
as the statute-book, and as damnable as any highway 
robbery. 

William Mc Arthur has been for many years the janitor 
of a white church in a former slave state. He owns a 
Th N w ' farm and city house ; has a bank account, 
Reaction and could loan money more easily than most 

against Racial of the church-members he serves. His repu- 
jus ice tation for character is as good as any of 

theirs. When, therefore, a disreputable white woman at- 
tempted to blackmail him by threatening to charge him 
with assault on a child, he naturally went to the church 
officers for advice. They believed in him as they did in 
each other, but put him on a midnight train for Califor- 
nia. To his Northern pastor it was incredible that a 
man of his reputation should have to flee like a thief. The 
answer was : " This community is likely to lynch first and 
investigate afterwards." So McArthur went — he could 
afford to, — saying with pathetic humor, " I always 
wanted to travel West anyhow." After six months he 
felt safe to come back and take up his work. Not long 
after the community did lynch three negroes on an Easter 
morning. The grand jury, investigating afterward, found 
that two of them were certainly innocent. Only bayonets 
saved the negro quarter from burning. Then McArthur 
came to his pastor to know where under the stars and 
stripes a self-respecting and respected black man could 

[204] 



A BACKGROUND FOR BLACK 



buy his ovm vine and fig-tree, and go and sit down under 
them in the ordinary security of Christian civilization. 

Now McArthur's character is fixed so that adversity, 
while it seams his brow and weights his steps, does not 
make a social rebel of him ; but his boy, when I last saw 
him, was behind the bars. 

Now, I charge that America did not give McArthur's 
boy a square deal. Of course he is a responsible soul, with 
heart, will, and conscience enough to make some impres- 
sion on his own moral destiny. Let him bear his full share 
of the blame ; but let us weigh this : he had felt the help- 
lessness of the property-owning negro before the black- 
mailer; had seen his father a fugitive at midnight, his 
life hanging upon an idle word; had heard just men con- 
fess their inability to protect one in whom they had all 
confidence ; had vainly longed for a fatherland which could 
guarantee somewhere a peaceful death to one who had 
lived in honor; had smelled the burning flesh of innocent 
men of his own race. Besides all this his own weakness 
had been trafficked in by a venal police power. Such 
things are not calculated to make a young negro into 
a model citizen. You tell me that after all the cord and 
the torch are rare, that statistically one is more Hkely to 
die from falling off a step-ladder at home than a negro 
is to be lynched. I reply that when one has once come 
under the shadow of such a tragedy he can never forget 
it. It stamps his imagination for all time and sears his 
soul against the social order in which it is tolerated. 

How, then, shall the racial element in the negro's re- 
corded criminality be measured.? Manifestly by first sub- 

„ ,T u • tracting that which is not racial ; namely. 
How Much IS , . , . , , T . 1 • -11 J • 

Left for Racial that which is clearly due to his social liandi- 

Explanation? cap, proved physical weakness, neglected 



205 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

child life, and the like; the criminality which is due to 
his moral handicap, including the physical and spiritual 
attacks by society on the virtue of the negro woman ; the 
criminality which industry creates ; the criminality which 
is such by definition only, and that which results from the 
unjust administration of the law against an unpopular 
race. When this is done there are not many facts left de- 
manding a racial explanation. Such an explanation is 
not needed. To say that the negro is after all bestial 
by nature is gratuitous. Other factors fully account 
for his moral deficiency when allowed their legitimate 
significance. 

In the destiny of the American negro one of the most 
crucial elements is the deep-seated determination of the 
Destiny of the American people to give a racial explana- 
American tion to his deficiencies and to act accordingly. 

Negro Qyp thought about our black fellow Ameri- 

can is one of the cruelest of his environing facts. It can 
and does hold the balance of power for millions of lives 
and characters. The outcome hinges largely on the al- 
ternative of national justice or injustice. 

Already the hand writes plainly, " Thou art weighed in 
the balances, and art found wanting " ; but of wliom pri- 
marily ? Of a nation which through blind misunderstand- 
ing does not correct the socially remediable causes of 
destruction in one of its weaker groups. Then, of some 
part of the negro population. No one can anticipate the 
salvation of the whole race. It is all too patent that 
part of it is failing daily, going to jail, losing its job, 
dying ! 

But this indicates no race tendency. The solidarity 
of the negro race in social destiny is neither a necessity 
nor a fact. Already a minority of its members are com- 

[206 1 



A BACKGROUND FOR BLACK 



pletely Americanized ; they have arrived. The sifting of 
the race will proceed still further, lifting some into the 
emerged and conquering group and discovering to others 
their " own place " ; not as negroes, but as individual, 
family, or group failures. Lying statistics, however, 
arithmetically accurate, confuse the nation's mind by unit- 
ing in tables what are sundered in life, namely, the as- 
cending and descending colored groups. At the worst 
they do not apply to a large and increasing type within 
the race. In the face of the facts it is sheer presumption 
to prophesy the extinction of the American negro. Not 
only is the chief tendency of our civilization toward the 
checking of the struggle for survival as it exists on a 
brute plane (if it were not so the majority of the white 
race were also doomed), but the modem world ever dis- 
covers ways of utilizing a larger and larger proportion 
of human material.^ We do not foDow out the law of the 
destruction of the unfit to its bitter end. We do find place 
for more and more people of very ordinary competency. 
Besides, even with the severest sifting, some negroes would 
undoubtedly survive. 

What then shall be the relative proportion of the two 
groups — the successes and the failures.'' If some are 
beyond our help, others are above our harm; but for the 
central mass, the five-sixths withheld as yet from their 
sterner trial, the die is not cast. We shall hold their 
hand as they cast it, either to help or to hinder. At the 
core of the negro problem thus lies the problem of the 
Anglo-Saxon ; a difficulty not of the blood of Africa, but 
of the spirit of America. " Lord, are there few that be 
saved.'' " That depends upon whether those who are able 

* See the acute application of this argument by Murphy, Basis of 
Ascendency, pp. 64 ff. 



[207] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

to enter in by the strait gate shall widen it a little as 
they go through for the sake of their brothers. Let the 
nation do justice to the negro in those matters in which 
his deficiencies are remediable and then turn over to God 
and posterity their share of the business. 



208] 



yil. TYPICAL MISSIONARY 
ACTIVITIES 

I. SPIRIT AND POLICY 

" fTT^HE first," said the late Dr. A. D. Mayo, " and 

I still the most notable of the several great mis- 

"^ sionary associations for the training of the negro 

race in the Southern states, through schools of every 

grade and the ordinary methods of mission work employed 

The Work of by the Evangelical Protestant churches in 

the American the Northern United States, was the Ameri- 

issionary ^^^ Missionary Association." Its mission- 

Association, ... 

Typical yet ary activities are typical of those followed 

Unique by several of the great Christian bodies of 

the North — Methodist Episcopal,, Presbyterian, Protes- 
tant Episcopal, Baptist, and Society of Friends ; but in 
spirit and policy its work has been unique. 

Dr. Mayo continues : " Of all the mission educational en- 
terprises of the Northern Protestant evangelical churches, 
the American Missionary Association seems to have borne 
in mind most completely the idea of working in connection 
with the Southern states and people in the upbuilding of 
the common school for the colored race. It has, more 
than others, discouraged the mischievous habit of engraft- 
ing the old-time parochial school on the churches that 
have been developed by its missionary activity. In three 
of these states — Virginia, Mississippi, and Georgia — at 
different times its larger schools have been subsidized by 
the state in the interest of their normal and industrial 
departments. It has not shown the usual desire to retain 

14 [ 209 ] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

its original authority or to utilize its bounty to acquire 
the perpetual educational control of its schools. Four of 
the most important schools of the higher order with wliich 
it has been connected and which have been liberally aided 
by it are now entirely separated from it — Howard, Wash- 
ington, D. C. ; Hampton, Virginia ; Berea, Kentucky ; 
and Atlanta University, Georgia. The explanation of 
this may be found in the fact, already stated, that al- 
though the American Missionary Association first united 
with several of the evangelical Protestant churches in its 
work among the colored people, each of these associations 
in turn has preferred to separate itself from others and 
organize on a more decided and exclusive denominational 
basis, looking to the church it represents for its support 
and guided by the sectarian policy thereof." ^ This is 
to say that the Association has been a true nationalizing 
agency. Its work has been done, not as an adjunct to 
a movement of denominational extension, but in whole- 
hearted devotion to the educational and civic uplift of the 
needy groups who constitute a national problem. 

In pohcy it shows, on the other hand, a sharp contrast 
to the splendid group of larger schools which it has 
Educational graduated into independence. It has always 
Diifusion vs. stood for diffusion rather than for concen- 
Concentration tration of opportunity. From the standpoint 
of financial support this has required courage. Experi- 
enced money-raisers testify that they can more easily secure 
funds for one or two big schools than for many smaller 
ones. Such is the tendency of present-day philanthropy. 
It likes great show and to settle upon large institutions : 
to the school that hath shall be given. The American is 
peculiarly under the spell of bigness. A single one of 
' Report of Commissioner of Education, 1902, vol. i, p. 292. 
[2101 



TYPICAL MISSIONARY ACTIVITIES 



the larger institutions of the Association might well ab- 
sorb its entire current income. Such an institution would 
then be able to dominate the imagination of the public 
along with the one or two which now monopolize it. 

In spite of all this the policy of diffusion is the de- 
liberate choice. The most distinctive American school is 
. the small college, in intimate relations with 
Institutions its community and with a constituency chiefly 
of Adequate local. As a type it is more widely useful 
Standard ^j^^^ ^ great university ever can be. Not 

only is the education of the smaller school apt to be 
sounder and its administration invariably more economic — 
but it remains closer to the people. Distance itself is a 
selective agency. Those who go from remote states even 
to the great trade-schools, do not represent the average 
of their people. Every section, and especially the South 
with its backward population, needs more than anything 
else local institutions of adequate standard. Nothing can 
take their place. 



II. STRATEGIC LOCATION 

A certain prophetic foresight seems to have governed 
the estabhshment of the institutions of the Association. 
. . The general tendencies of negro population 

Line of Chief within the last fifteen years — massing that 
Movements of popvJation in the cities. North and South, 
Population ^^^ .^ ^ well-marked Black Belt stretching 

across the Central South from Virginia to Texas — has 
only emphasized its wisdom. They affect unfavorably a 
few small schools in the border states, but every consider- 
able institution is either in a region overwhelmingly black, 
to which negro population is increasingly migrating, or 

[211] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

in a city, with its daily enlarging need of ministry to a 
population undergoing an acute social transition. This 
may be established in detail by an examination of insti- 
tutions state by state. On the whole, then, the course 
of events has fallen in with the foresight of the Associa- 
tion to put the great bulk of its work exactly where it 
ought to be. Such eliminations of unprofitable work as 
were necessary have already taken place and at little sacri- 
fice of resources. This is in striking contrast to the 
case of numerous other agencies. The negro sects have 
too often lacked the instinct of statesmanship and failed 
to locate their schools with reference to the tendency of 
population. For sentimental reasons Berea College is 
now attempting the doubtful experiment of establishing 
a colored adjunct in a border state with a small and 
rapidly waning negro population. No agency has so little 
to correct in its strategy of education as the American 
Missionary Association. 

III. CLASSIFICATION OF INSTITUTIONS 

The diffusion of opportunity necessitates a wide variety 
of institutions falling under several well-marked types. 
An All-sided The work of the Association is truly all- 
Work sided, and the much debated issue of higher 
vs. industrial training is meaningless as applied to it. Its 
schools have not been founded on theory, but to meet 
specific concrete needs. They range from a three or four 
months' school with one teacher and twenty pupils, housed 
in a windowless log cabin, to the great institutions which, 
in promise, and even in present realization, do not dis- 
grace the name university. 

[212] 



TYPICAL MISSIONARY ACTIVITIES 



A. Ungraded Schools 

Negro communities which are not furnished with even 
the rudiments of education are numbered by tens of thou- 
Defects of sands. What passes for a school lacks every- 

Negro Rural thing of educational value. The term is too 
Public Schools brief ; the teacher too ignorant, often im- 
moral and totally unsupervised. One of these teachers 
taught in an entirely different district from that to which 
he was appointed, and explained that it was all the same 
so long as he was at work somewhere. The pay is often 
so little as to attract only the laziest and least success- 
ful ; the housing conditions are unspeakably bad. A Tal- 
ladega graduate taught an entire school year in a slab 
schoolhouse with solid blinds which were nailed shut, the 
authorities refusing to have them opened. In a score or 
more such communities the Association is touching the 
problem of educational uplift in its lowliest aspect. It 
sends an educated teacher — possibly a pastor or a pas- 
tor's wife — to supplement the public school with an ad- 
Supplementarv ditional two or four months' session, or adds 
Work of the a subsidy to the public funds so that a nor- 
Associatioa jj^^l graduate can afford the place. Its 
loaves and fishes are not miraculously multiplied — and 
what are these among so many? The appeal of hundreds 
of similar places must annually be denied because it is 
more strategic to supply fewer communities more ade- 
quately. The policy of diffusion is already stretched to 
its utmost limit. Rudimentary education is essentially the 
business of the state, and to it the state stands committed. 
But the Association does all its work under a vivid sense 
of the need of these scattered communities, and of nothing 
Is it prouder than of this feeblest aspect of its work. 

[213] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTEUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

On what basis are these few ungraded schools selected 
and located? Almost invariably because a graduate of 
A Typical Case : ^ more adequate school has gone to teach in 
Beachtown a needy community and has been able to 
raise its people to help themselves — the Association 
merely coming in to supplement local initiative. Here is 
a concrete case. In southwestern Georgia, near to the 
Florida line and fourteen miles from a railroad, is a negro 
community called Beachtown. Few white natives live 
within a radius of ten miles, but much of the magnificent 
pine land has been bought up by Northern millionaires 
for winter homes and game preserves. The rest is mainly 
occupied and owned by negroes. A little group of cross- 
road stores constitutes the geographical hub of the com- 
munity. Its energy and enterprise largely center around 
a remarkable trio of mulatto half-brothers whose fathers 
were leading white citizens of the old regime. They own 
the store which was the center of the old-time life, from the 
block in front of which hundreds of negroes were sold as 
slaves. One of them was once a student in Atlanta Uni- 
versity. Yet the richest man in the community is an 
illiterate black negro who slaved his large family un- 
sparingly until he now owns some hundreds of acres, but 
has lately come around to appreciate education for his 
younger children. 

Indeed it was the sight of their children growing up 
with so few privileges that roused these men to revolt 
How the Com- ^ ^o'^ ^^e dominance of an illiterate, grossly 
munity Helped sectarian, and evil ministry, and to seek 
Itself worthy leadership and adequate school facili- 

ties. So they sent for a Yale-trained preacher from the 
county-seat, and appealed to the Association which had 
been the help of their people so many times of old. They 

[214] 



TYPICAL MISSIONARY ACTIVITIES 

were told to furnish the building and a teacher would 
be sent. They managed to erect a rough structure on 
a foundation of posts, and partly to side and ceil it. Its 
windows were low and narrow, giving very poor light. 
There was no flue, and it was seated with almost impos- 
sible home-made desks — but it measured their ability 
to help themselves. A teacher was sent for. She had 
gone from her country home to Allen Normal School and 
later to Fisk University, but she had not been educated 
out of sympathy with her own region and her own people. 
Now she came back to them. She was janitor, Sunday- 
school superintendent, and moral leader of the community, 
as well as teacher. She fought bravely against overwork 
and ill-health. Into her rented house she gathered half 
a dozen girls from " further back " — girls whose com- 
munities had no school at all. Her pupils came to be too 
many. Then the community built a little addition to the 
schoolhouse — I found it in use without door or sash or 
interior siding. Again the Association came to the rescue 
with a promise to pay a second teacher's salary if the 
people would complete the building.^ Thus our formula 

. , . ., of Christian philanthropy is applied: an un- 
Applying the . . ^ . . 

Formula of privileged community struggling for oppor- 
Christian tunity is made the neighbor of the more 

opy favored parts of the country through a na- 
tionalizing agency. The most impressive point to the 
story is the struggle of that community to help itself. 
There are thousands of other communities equally worthy 
waiting the outreaching of some helping hand. 

' Still later the Slater Board added a third salary for an industrial 
teacher. 



215 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

B. Graded Elementary Schools 

Next in order comes a group of well-conducted graded 
elementary schools with good buildings and an average 
of five teachers each. They are located in the country 
or on the outskirts of small towns. Some have boarding 
departments accommodating from twenty to fifty students 
coming from a somewhat wide area. Others are purely 
local in influence. Each one, besides the immediate service 
to its community, has a worthy record of preparing and 
sending out pupils for more advanced training. 

Trinity School, at Athens, Alabama, belongs to the first 
generation of American Missionary Association institu- 
A Historic tions founded during the Civil War. It 

School began its work behind the bayonets of Fed- 

eral troops for the refugees who flocked from up and 
down the Tennessee valley. One describes its early work 
as follows: 

A gaunt old house with wide-open cracks, through 
which pea-shooters and pop-guns were often intro- 
duced to the great discomfort both of teachers and 
pupils. In this building Miss Wells and two other 
women taught day and night school for a long time. 
Cannot you picture that night school ; that frail, 
alert little woman surrounded by a sea of black faces, 
the man in the linen ulster, the seven boys who had one 
pair of presentable trousers between them, and so 
came to school turn and turn about, the old aunties 
in homespun, the girls in missus' cast-off finery.'* 
Learning to read was a task then, I can tell you, 
with any odd leaf for a book and a candle end be- 
tween two for a light. But they came, day in, night 
out, and many of them learned to read " de bressed 
Book," and received enough to be willing to go 

[216] 



TYPICAL MISSIONARY ACTIVITIES 

through fire and water, if only their children could 
get all which could be given them. 

Athens now is a prosperous county-seat. Its people are 
building modern houses. The artisans are skilled negroes. 
It is pushing macadamized roads out into the country in 
all directions. It has some pretensions as an educational 
center, boasting of its girls', its boys', and its negro " col- 
leges." But its white children, even, have never had a 
free public school ; little chance, then, for its black chil- 
dren. Through all these years it is Trinity which has 
made them what they are. Practically the whole negro 
population can read and write. It has a number of pros- 
perous business men, and has developed a pride in and 
sense of responsibility for its school which the Association 
has had abundant opportunity to prove. A year or two 
ago the old school building burned. When the fire broke 
out a small colored girl was buying a pair of doll's shoes 
in a near-by store. Catching up her nickel and crying, 
" I doan' want no doll shoes," she rushed out and gave the 
first money toward the rebuilding of the school, to which 
the negro community contributed in all considerably over 
$1000. The old location was abandoned, and the school 
Holding the rebuilt on the site and within the earthworks 
Fort of an old Federal fort, which once defended 

and still commands the town. In a single year more than 
thirty negro homes were built around the school, many of 
them being neat and comfortable cottages. The white 
community showed its recognition of the work by a vote of 
$100 from the city council as well as by offerings in the 
churches. Now a commodious brick building stands within 
the fringe of trees which marks the outline of the old for- 
tress ; there Trinity still holds the fort. 

[217] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

The greatest need of the negro is frequently not found 
in the Black Belt where he outnumbers the white popula- 
Where Negroes tion and by sheer force of numbers demands 
are Few recognition and a share in the educational 

provision of the state. It is often found among the 
sparser population of the Piedmont region, especially 
where the burden of the illiterate whites is great, as in the 
mill towns ; or in decaying communities. Such a one is 
Hillsboro, one of the ancient capitals of North Carolina. 
It has a few hundred humble negro citizens who share the 
fortunes of a once aristocratic but now crumbling town. 
King George III gave the clock in the court-house, and 
Lord Comwallis laid the rough pavement in front of the 
Inn. These are the last public improvements that Hills- 
boro has had. One of the very few Southerners I ever met 
who did not brag of his section was a man who was at- 
tempting to start a mill in the face of Hillsboro con- 
servatism. 

On the outskirts of the village stands a neat two-room 
schoolhouse with tower and bell. It is well equipped within 
with blackboards and maps and other school facilities. In 
it the Association has carried on for a hundred negro 
children of Hillsboro a better school than its white chil- 
dren have had for many, many years. The two teachers 
live snugly in an ancient brick house which is the head- 
quarters of the higher life of the negro community. Their 
missionary work is of the old-fashioned but never-worn- 
out personal sort. They go out into the homes and share 
the joy and sorrow, the sickness and health of the people. 
They teach the mothers and gather in the young people. 
They have a little night class for young men ambitious for 
more education. They put moral character and Northern 
energy into the negro churches. There is nothing better 

[218] 



TYPICAL MISSIONARY ACTIVITIES 

than work of this character done simply but effectively in 
the places of actual need. The South as represented in 
Hillsboro cannot begin to meet the problem of its poor 
white population. Here at least is missionary ground. 

But after all the most frequent spots of need and help- 
lessness are in the Black Belts. Such a one I found in 
Where Negroes Cotton Valley, in the same county with Tus- 
are Many kegee in central Alabama. I had been to Tus- 

kegee the previous day and had driven from the junction 
to the Institute over a hard, sandy road on which the 
wheels made scarcely a mark. Cotton Valley was only ten 
miles distant, yet the four-mile journey from the railroad 
to the school was over unspeakable roads with mud to the 
hubs. At Tuskegee I saw the greatest single institution 
developed by negro energy ; from the school at Cotton 
Valley I could not see a single farm owned by a negro. 
Hardly one of the fathers of the some two hundred and 
fifty pupils was known to have title to enough ground in 
which to bury him.^ The explanation of the sharp con- 
trast lies in the difference between sand and mud. Mr. 
W^ashington was able to acquire a great domain for his 
school because the land was originally of little agricultural 
value. The negroes of Cotton Valley have been unable to 
break away from the tenant system because their famous 
cotton crops have made the price of land impossibly high. 
Frequently the richer the soil the more tenacious the 
owner, the more grasping the money-lender ; consequently 
the poorer the negro. The school has discovered striking 
exceptions, but I never saw more serf-like human beings 

* Since this statement was written five families have begun to purchase 
little farms. This was made possible by the subdivision of small planta- 
tions. It was undertaken as a direct result of the leadership of the school, 
whose teacher made the business arrangements. 

[219] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

than the stohd groups of tenants gathered at the railway 
station and the rude country store. 

The country store merits a second look, for it is the hub 
of the whole scheme of existence in which the negro finds 
himself, as Mr. Baker graphically explains : 

Many negro families possess practically nothing 
of their own, save their ragged clothing, and a few 
dollars' worth of household furniture, cooking uten- 
sils, and a gun. The landlord must therefore supply 
them not only with enough to live on while they are 
making their crop, but with the entire farming outfit. 
Let us say that a negro comes in November to rent 
a one-mule farm from the landlord for the coming 
year. 

" What Tiave you got? " asks the landlord. 

" Not'ing, boss," he is quite likely to say. 

The " boss " furnishes him with a cabin to live in 

— which goes with the land rented — a mule, a 
plow, possibly a one-horse wagon, and a few tools. 
He is often given a few dollars in cash near Christ- 
mas time which (ordinarily) he immediately spends 

— wastes. He is then allowed to draw upon the 
plantation supply store a regular amount of corn to 
feed his mule, and meat, bread, and tobacco, and some 
clothing for his family. The cost of the entire outfit 
and supplies for a year is in the neighborhood of 
$300, upon which the tenant pays interest at from 10 
to 30 per cent, from the time of signing the contract 
in November, although most of the supplies are not 
taken out until the next summer. Besides this interest 
the planter also makes a large profit on all the gro- 
ceries and other necessaries furnished by his supply 
store. Having made his contract the negro goes to 
work with his whole family and keeps at it until the 
next fall when the cotton is all picked and ginned. 

[220] 




TllANSI'OUTATION, LiHF.RTY Co., Ga. 








Homes is the Land of Mud-Daub 



TYPICAL MISSIONARY ACTIVITIES 

Then he comes in for his " settlement " — a great 
time of the year.-^ 

Now the actual goodness or badness of any human in- 
stitution depends upon the character of the men who oper- 
ate it. But some institutions give greater opportunity for 
good or evil, and the tenant system of the South under 
which the ignorant and friendless negro is practically and 
legally at the mercy of the white landlord, certainly gives 
the maximum opportunity for evil. Wherever I have in- 
quired in twelve states, I have been frankly told that a con- 
siderable number of planters and money-sharks live by 
" skinning the nigger." I witnessed the signing of a be- 
lated contract between Jim Freeman and his landlord. 
Jim's worldly wealth consisted in " one blind mule named 
Nell," a few rude tools (the Department of Agriculture 
estimates the negro tenant's farm implements as worth 
$7.50 on the average), and a huddle of household goods 
which lay on the depot platform in the February rain. 
His human resources were five cotton hands, himself, a 
wife, a half-grown son, and two small daughters. It was 
plainly to his immediate advantage to get even a leaky 
cabin as a refuge from the rain, and a peck of meal for 
his children's supper, but I wish I had been certain that 
his accounts would be honestly kept by the merchant, his 
cotton honestly weighed, and his share at the end of the 
year proportioned to his toil; for however inefficient a 
man, it is always pertinent to ask whether he gets a just 
equivalent for what he actually does. 

From its beginning, twenty years ago, the school at 
Cotton Valley has been in charge of a remarkable series of 
colored women as principals and teachers. They have had 

* Baker, Following the Color-Line, pp. 74-75. 

[221] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

the genius for making much of little, a native faculty for 
business and an instinct for neatness and order. One 
A Humble sees this in the clean, well-kept look of the 

History place, with its trim buildings, its newly swept 

yard and whitewashed fences. The nails still hold in the 
rude beams of the old, one-room cabin where the first 
teacher hung a curtain partitioning off her sleeping corner 
from the family with nine boys, thereby bringing the first 
dawn of a better womanhood to Cotton Valley. Efficiency 
and earnestness made a good school even when it was 
lodged in a little cluster of now disused cabins. I found a 
good school when the five teachers had but three class 
rooms between them and had to keep double recitations in 
process. Only just now has the Association been able to 
add two rooms to the building, and still the pupils average 
nearly fifty to a room. February being the birth month of 
certain great Americans, the teacher had the school re- 
view what it had learned on the subject. All remembered 
that Lincoln was born on the 12th. " Now, children, what 
happened on the 2^d? " Inspired by the presence of com- 
pany, Johnnie spoke up loud and clear, " He done riz on 
the 22d." Tuition is ten cents a month in the upper grades 
and Amelia's mother sent but five. Teacher said, " Tell 
your mother she must send five cents more tuition." Next 
morning the mother appeared demanding explanation. 
" Teacher, I doan' un'erstan' 'bout this yere ishun. I 
dun sen' one ishun ; now you wan' two ishun." 

The teacher's home near by the school is the pride of 
the Valley as its only two-story building, but its occupants 
Making Much find it a snug fit. Only by evolutions of mili- 
out of Little tary precision is the household able to gather 
round the dining-room table, and once placed one cannot 
move until all the rest do. There is a built-in sideboard, 

[ 222 ] 



TYPICAL MISSIONARY ACTIVITIES 

the work of a lady teacher whose father was an old-time 
mechanic. She also laid the front walk out of frag-ments 
of brick. In one of the dark and sagging old cabins she 
is pluckily trying to teach girls to make their own 
clothes. This touches the final need of Cotton Valley, — 
a small building and equipment for the teaching of indus- 
tries — cooking and sewing for girls, simple farm mechan- 
ics for boys, and elementary agriculture for both. Then 
this fairly typical country graded school will have compre- 
hended its ideal. 

C. Secondary Schools in Cities 

This comprises another distinct group of institutions. 
Their nomenclature is somewhat disguising. They are gen- 
erally called normal schools or institutes. The plain word 
for them is that all are more or less satisfactory city high 
schools, doing solid work with somewhat limited curricula. 

The boundary between elementary and secondary educa- 
tion is conventional, but is commonly located after the 
seventh or eighth school year. A fourth of the so-called 
white high schools of the South count the seventh year as 
belonging to secondary rank. Thus, not infrequently, the 
negro high school supported by the Association is found 
to be higher in grade and superior in equipment to the 
corresponding white school of its city. In fact, the work 
of several of them is as advanced and as worthy as that of 
many " colleges " in this section. 

Almost all this group of schools have retained a part at 
least of the elementary course. This is necessitated by the 
rp • g] generally poor preparation for secondary 
mentary Edu- work furnished by the inefficient and crude 
cation over to negro public schools, which frequently do not 
^ °^ include even a full elementary course. The 

[223] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

flourishing city of Macon, Georgia, for example, carries 
its negro children only through the sixth year. This com- 
pels the Ballard Normal School to furnish two seventh and 
two eighth grades in order to supply the hordes of appli- 
cants. Sometimes the elementary grades are perpetuated 
as a model school for the training of practise teachers. 
The general tendency, however, is to be aggressively insist- 
ent that the prosperous and growing cities of the South 
shall furnish the elementary education for all their children 
to which they are theoretically committed. Consequently, 
the lower grades are now being progressively abandoned in 
six of the leading schools of the Association. Such move- 
ments are frequently resisted by negro communities which 
prefer the sympathizing and generally superior instruction 
of the mission school to the lax officialism and neglect of 
the public authorities. They plead for the continuance of 
primary instruction on the ground that otherwise their 
children will get poor teaching in unsanitary buildings, — 
often on immoral streets. Yet experience has shown that 
this very attitude of distrust and disregard for the public 
schools on the part of the negro is frequently the excuse of 
the white authorities for not improving them. Negro 
public opinion has weight, and when it persistently de- 
mands its educational rights and recognizes the obligation 
to cooperate with public authority it often meets surpris- 
ingly cordial response in the ready betterment of elemen- 
tary educational facilities. 

But with the higher schools the case is quite different. 
The idea that it is the duty of the state to furnish free 
Lack of Public secondary schooling for anybody is imper- 
High Schools fectly rooted in the South. The more con- 
servative cities have but recently opened public high 
schools even for whites. There is not only no sense of obli- 

[224] 



TYPICAL MISSIONARY ACTIVITIES 

gation to do a like thing for negro youth, but on the whole 
a general agreement that all the negro is entitled to is 
five, six, or at best eight years of elementary training. 
This attitude of mind forgets that every citizen of a demo- 
cratic state has a righteous claim to all the opportunity 
publicly provided for any. It also forgets the rapidly in- 
creasing differentiation of negro society and the diffusion 
of its members through all the occupations and callings of 
our modern civilization. In every Southern city there is a 
considerable negro minority which has fairly earned the 
right to high-school training for its children — by dig- 
nity of character, personal culture, wealth, and social at- 
tainment. The South — with some exception in the border 
states — disdains their aspirations and there are no signs 
that its attitude will speedily change. Except for the in- 
adequate and grudging support of a few public institu- 
tions for the training of negro teachers, the whole field of 
secondary education is left to philanthropy and the negro's 
private efforts. 

Take Savannah, for example, a typical Southern city, 
with a population of 33,000 whites and 39,000 negroes. 
Its negro school population is 8023 and its enrolment 
2591 (or less than one-third) ; if every existing school, 
public and private, were crowded to the doors, fully 
one-half of Savannah's negro children would have neither 
book, desk, nor teacher. This in itself justifies Beach 
Institute. The situation loudly demands the help of the 
mission school, at least in its elementary grades. But 
what of the high school .-^ Does the negro community 
need or merit it? 

I went with the principal to find out what the constitu- 
ency would contribute to add an eleventh grade and de- 
partments of manual training and domestic science to its 

15 [ 225 ] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

work. First we called on the typical Southern gentleman 
— socially classified as negro — who holds the best federal 
office in Georgia — Colonel Deveaux, Collector of the Port. 
Before I knew the South, I supposed the appointment of 
negroes to such positions was mere politics ; I now see that 
it is the appropriate recognition of the substantial achieve- 
ment of the race and its considerable part in the devel- 
opment of its section. Savannah growls that the Presi- 
dent sets a negro over its commerce, but it has itself set a 
colored doctor over a more important matter — the 
health of a whole district of its people. We visited him in 
his office and heard about the awful but slowly decreasing 
negro death-rate and the struggle of sanitary science with 
ignorance and vice for the life of children. 

The chief negro commercial enterprises of Savannah are 
in the neighborhood of the Union Depot. Here we visited 
the bank, the newspaper offices, stores. The bank is a com- 
paratively young institution for which the color-line is 
directly responsible. Jim Crow methods arrived slowly in 
this conservative city. When, however, it came to pass 
that a negro with money to deposit found that he had to 
go to a separate teller's window he decided to bank with 
his own race. In connection with the bank is a flourishing 
building and loan association which has enabled a hun- 
dred patrons to pay out on their homes and will help hun- 
dreds more. I found the newspaper — an influential race 
organ throughout the state — just moving into larger 
quarters, from a building where it had been continuously 
published for more than twenty-five years. Skilled negro 
mechanics were installing the improved presses. (There 
are seven negro trade-unions — the bricklayers, carpen- 
ters, coopers, building laborers, lathers, pattern-turners, 
besides colored members in other unions.) They can buy 

[226] 



TYPICAL MISSIONARY ACTIVITIES 

their groceries at a negro store which for equipment and 
stock ranks with the better estabhshments of the city. 
Across the street from the bank, I was shown a row of 
houses acquired by a colored postal clerk through shrewd 
real estate investment. Every tourist makes an extensive 
acquaintance with the hackmen of Savannah. I found that 
many of them make a very good living showing the sights 
of one of the South's most attractive cities and that the 
negro boycott of the street cars — after their " Jim 
Crowing " two years ago — helped many of these Jehu's 
over into the ranks of the comfortable and property- 
owning. I visited two of the four negro public schools, 
and later met a group of the colored leaders of the city — 
many of them graduates of Beach — and most of them 
members of the two churches, Episcopal and Congrega- 
tional, which have attracted the more intelligent classes. 
In each of these churches the service is habitually as de- 
corous and restrained as in the middle-class white churches 
of the North. Their ministers are scholarly men of 
Northern theological education, respected throughout the 
city for character and trusted as conservative race leaders. 
Other denominations are much stronger, some of their 
churches dating back over a century; and several have 
pastors of distinct power in the pulpit. Recently an inter- 
denominational Men's Sunday Club has been organized to 
minister to the social needs of the race on a somewhat 
broader basis than that of ordinary Y. M. C. A. work. 
A group of well-educated and successful physicians has 
been active with the pastors and educators of this move- 
ment. I met also a highly respected negro lawyer and got 
glimpses of more than one home of taste, culture, and all 
the true graces of life. 

Now the facts are that if white Savannah should suffer 

[227] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

the fate of Sennacherib's army some night, black Savannah 
would wake up to carry on the entire business of modem 
city civilization with scarcely a jar. Yet the Savannah 
negro is comparatively backward in developing separate 
institutions. The relations of the races have been relatively 



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kindly ; consequently the negro has not been forced upon 
his own resources as in dozens of more strenuous communi- 
ties. But this is clear : there is a negro group there which 
has every right to a high school for its children that any 
American group has. They are not going into kitchens 
and the fields for the same reason that the white children 
of white " upper classes " are not ; their economic status 
does not require it nor should it lead any one to expect it. 
I personally believe that it is not well for the nation to give 
any portion of its youth a merely academic and socially 

[228] 



TYPICAL MISSIONARY ACTIVITIES 

ornamental education ; consequently I am proud that the 
Beach Aid Association, organized by representatives of 
the groups I have just described, has made possible the 
addition of manual training and domestic science to the 
curriculum of the school. The equipment for these de- 
partments was secured partly by direct appropriations 
from negro trade-union treasuries. 

The foregoing table indicates the scope and development 
of some of the larger city schools of the Association. 

From such fully manned and equipped institutions, 
schools of this group grade down to those with twenty or 
thirty pupils, two teachers and only two years of secondary 
work. The teachers, however, are almost invariably college 
or normal school graduates, and the work, up to the meas- 
ure of its facilities, acceptably fulfils standard requirements. 

Ministering as they chiefly do to that part of the negro 

population which has arrived at a large measure of parti- 

T, , , p cipation in American civilization, the educa- 

rroblems or . ^ 

City Secondary tional problems of these schools are not pecu- 

Schools not liarlv racial but are those common to the 
"^ high-school situation throughout the nation. 

Beyond question they are serious enough; but they are 
being worked out along the most hopeful lines of modern 
progress, including enriched courses of study, increasing 
provision for specialization, laboratory methods in science, 
and the inclusion of commercial studies, together with 
generous provision for instruction in household and man- 
ual training. In many respects they are rapidly becoming 
model high schools. 

D. Rural Secondary Schools 

The most striking contrast between this group of schools 
and the one last considered is that between the boarding and 

[229] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION 11;? THE SOUTH 

The Advantage ^^^ ^^y school. A few of the city schools 
of the Rural have boarding departments but these are 
School proportionately small and invariably domin- 

ated by the ideals and relations of the day school. The 
institution gets its tone and character from the five or sis 
hours of schoolroom discipline. The rural secondary 
schools on the contrary are permanent communities, often 
remote from towns. Within them all the activities of life 
go on, and the work of education is a matter of twenty- 
four hours in a day and seven days in a week. Conse- 
quently their opportunity both for educational impress 
and for the forming of character is infinitely greater. 
Their human material is less select, coming as it does 
directly from the woods and fields, and their scholastic re- 
sults are hampered by the poverty of the students, most 
of whom are engaged in the struggle for a livelihood prac- 
tically throughout their school years, and are consequently 
distracted in mind and irregular in attendance. Their 
secondary departments are all small and do not so gener- 
ally reach standard results. Nevertheless their advanced 
work is genuine and its ideals give character to this whole 
type of institution. 

It is characteristic of these schools not only to be 
located in the country but largely to get their support 

_ „ from the land. They are typically farm 

The Most Eco- , i ■ i • , , ■ -. / -i 

nomicaland schools m which a large majority or pupils 

Effective support themselves in part or in whole by 

Schools in productive labor in connection with the in- 

stitution. This necessitates farm-buildings, 
animals, and implements, the raising of produce for the 
feeding of the school, a wide range of practical activities 
involving business and administrative ability, and much in- 
dustrial and domestic training, each theoretical stage of 

[230] 



TYPICAL MISSIONARY ACTIVITIES 

which finds an Immediate practical application in the day's 
work. The narrow gap between what the pupil can earn 
for himself and the cost of his rigidly economical schooling 
is bridged by scholarship funds distributed in small 
amounts to a large number of pupils. This union of pro- 
ductive labor and education within the strong discipline 
and personal influences of a moderately sized institution, 
constitutes probably the most economical and effective 
type of education in America. Gradually the more prom- 
ising group of these institutions are being developed 
into distinctly agricultural high schools, their aim be- 
ing to add the education of insight for the few to the edu- 
cation of good habits for the many and to be centers of 
leadership and inspiration along all lines of rural better- 
. ment. For the training of farmers especially 

Opportunity ^^^ opportunity of these schools is unrivaled. 
of the Small The prosperity of the South depends upon 
Agricultural ^ great extension of diversified agriculture 
and a diffusion of the leaven of improved 
farm methods from many centers. The boy who leaves 
his community to attend a far-distant school all too fre- 
quently never returns. These modest rural high schools 
give him a rarely practical farm training without divorc- 
ing him from his native soil, and at a minimum of expense. 
I am positively convinced that in all lines of industrial 
training except specialized trades courses, the work of 
these smaller schools, which bring opportunity home to the 
masses, is more efficient, more in line with a sound social 
policy and more serviceable to the negro race than that of 
the great mass schools which so dominate the public imag- 
ination. The practical operations of a large group of such 
institutions — the building and repairing of their plants, 

the development and management of their farms, the run- 

-_ 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

ning of their engines, the shoeing of their mules, the sharp- 
ening of their tools — train more practical mechanics 
than Hampton and Tuskegee have ever done. An acre 
which must supply to-morrow's pork and greens has more 
educational virtue in it than a play garden and a show 
farm. How little need of indirect educational devices when 
the situation itself constitutes an almost ideal opportunity 
for vitally practical training ! 

A typical school of tliis group is Dorchester Academy, 
located among the swamps of Liberty County, Georgia, 
. rp • , about thirty miles south of Savannah. This 

School: county was originally settled by Massachu- 

Dorchester setts Puritans who established there one of 

emy ^j^^ most famous and efficient communities 

in Georgia. Their great plantations were formerly chiefly 
given to the culture of rice. Now the region is almost 
wholly in the hands of negroes who are for the most part 
property owners. Out of this new material on old Congre- 
gational foundations the rebuilding of the commonwealth 
is going on. 

Every family in the present Congregational church owns 
its property and their case is general throughout the re- 
gion. The holdings vary from five to three hundred acres, 
averaging perhaps fifteen. The rice industry was in eco- 
nomic collapse long before Sherman came that way and 
burned the plantation houses. Thus it happened that 
after the war the practically abandoned lands were easily 
acquired by the negroes. They are worth now from $5 
to $10 per acre. Rice, cane, and corn are raised, but 
merely for home consumption and to be bartered by 
basketfuls for clothing and luxuries (tobacco, snuff, and 
canned goods) at the village store. Except for a few 
shapeless marsh cattle driven to the Savannah market 

[ 232 ] 





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TYPICAL MISSIONARY ACTIVITIES 

and some scattering bales of cotton, the country sends 
nothing out into the world. The trucking industry 
has just begun, but with reasonable development it 
might make the region rich. From November to March 
the farmer expects to eke out a living by cutting wood for 
railroad ties, at which in good times he makes excellent 
wages. Crop mortgages are unknown and long-time 
credit is rare. Bills are paid monthly or oftener. Thus 
the Liberty County negro, however poor, is relatively in- 
dependent with his little farm, his store of rice and grit 
and meat, his ox to drive and his supplementary cash wage ; 
and his wife and daughter, though still to a considerable 
extent doing rough field labor, have more time for home- 
making than in the cotton-raising regions. 

The poorer homes are sagging log huts, with mud- 
daubed chimneys, windowless and almost floorless. Some- 
times they are without a table or chair, their only beds 
ragged blankets on the floor and their meals always eaten 
from the skillet ; their children nameless savages, half- 
clothed and scarcely above jungle conditions. The best 
home, Isaac Morrison's, would be counted a comfortable 
ten-room farmhouse in New York or Illinois. Morrison 
has three hundred acres and above sixty head of cattle. 
These " rough it " for nine months in the year, and are 
fattened for three on wild hay and rice straw; they then 
bring about $15 per head in Savannah. He has his own 
cane-mill and reducing plant — a great iron kettle set 
in a mud furnace with mud chimney. He raises about fif- 
teen acres of rice and ten of cotton, yielding half a bale 
per acre in good years. He has three horses and is well 
supplied with razor-back hogs and poultry. His out- 
buildings are well constructed ; he has pine-thatched shel- 
ters for his cattle. In his well-kept gardens are turnips, 

[233] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

cabbages, and fruit. He has had fourteen children, two 
of whom are dead, three married, and four now teaching 
country schools. His prosperity is due to the fact that 
he worked them all desperately hard. Yet with the mis- 
sion school at their door, they got something of an edu- 
cation. Now Isaac rents out much of his land and hires 
less prosperous neighbors to do his work. 

These are the extremes. As I rode through the coun- 
try in the springtime and noted the homes I saw not 
less than two-score newly built houses within a radius of 
a dozen miles. These invariably were of frame and clap- 
boards instead of logs, and had brick chimneys. The 
tough clay which made this region so long the character- 
istic land of mud-daub is now being turned at a near-by 
plant into a fine quality of roofing tile, and one frequently 
sees the anomaly of houses worth scarcely a hundred 
dollars with roofs which would grace a million dollar 
cathedral. 

It is interesting to find under such an up-to-date roof 
(domestic utensils of purely African pattern. Rice is 
threshed in a wooden mortar reminiscent of the jungle and 
winnowed by being thrown in the air and caught in broad 
" fanners " or baskets of rice straw. 

In the outlying coast communities, where the influence 
of the mission schools has not been present, primitive 
traits tend to appear, especially in social and religious life. 
The coast swamp negro has many local dialects in which 
corrupted African words are alleged to survive. Sectarian 
church organizations are said to be declining in favor of 
the local lodges or burial and relief societies. This is un- 
doubtedly a reversion from a higher to a more primitive 
type of social organization. The country is dotted over 
with the halls of such societies, whose thatched feasting 

[234] 



TYPICAL MISSIONARY ACTIVITIES 

sheds attest the essentially sensuous character of prim- 
itive religions, out of which the negro is struggling. I 
recall a weird night meeting in such a hall; a gigantic 
lodge-leader, plainly a witch-doctor in thin disguise, stand- 
ing before an enormous fireplace, whose lurid flames made 
mysterious shadows creep up and down the unhewn rafters 
of the cavernous room ; a half hundred worshipers crouch- 
ing in semi-darkness relieved only by the flashing of fanat- 
ical eyes ; the alternate wildness and plaintive passion of 
prayer and song, till the mood of spiritual burden passed 
and the meeting resolved into a rhythmic dance of relief 
and joy, from which fleshly impulses were not entirely 
absent. 

A few years ago, indeed, not far from here, a horrible 
revival of phallic worship broke out and was with difficulty 
suppressed by the authorities. It all bore the Christian 
name, and the scientific no less than the sympathetic ob- 
server would concede its profound religiousness and poten- 
tial social power. We were all digged from this same pit 
and under the cruder emotions our boasted veneer of civili- 
zation dissolves into the primitive. If the Georgia coast 
negro puts rice into the grave for ghosts to eat, we put 
flowers there — for ghosts to smell ! Each of us has for- 
gotten why our ancestors taught us these ways. The negro 
is only a little nearer the savage. Yet when, as in the 
black counties and under the increasing tendency of race 
segregation, American civilization has deserted him, his 
gains hang in a trembling balance. We need all the 
resources of civilization to keep us up to our standard 
of life. He needs them to keep him up to and raise him 
above his. 

The Dorchester Academy has about forty acres of land, 
some two hundred and fifty pupils, a dozen teachers, and 

[235] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

a very good equipment of buildings. There is an excellent 
eight-room schoolhouse, a large girls' dormitory, and a 
church ministered to by a colored pastor. It has a boys' 
dormitory, a two-story woodworking shop, a small black- 
smith shop, a bricklaying shed, a modest printing-office, 
a gasoline engine and wood-saw, and a well-equipped laun- 
dry, besides a barn with stock and farm implements, and 
a magnificent flowing well, furnishing ample water supply. 
There are special teachers for agriculture, farm mechan- 
ics, domestic science, sewing, and dressmaking. Only 
twenty-three pupils are in the secondary grades, but the 
work which they do is sufficient and worthy. This descrip- 
tion, with greater or less variation, would fit Gloucester 
School, Cappahosic, Virginia ; Lincoln Academy, Kings 
Mountain, North Carolina ; Brewer Normal School, Green- 
wood, South Carolina; Fessenden Academy, Fessenden, 
Florida; and Lincoln Normal, Marion, Alabama. The 
presence of schools of this type is significantly lacking in 
the states of Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Yet 
of the fifty-five counties in America with a negro popula- 
tion of over 75 per cent, thirty-four are in these very 
states. This is the most notable gap in the Association's 
system of schools, and the lack of other opportunities for 
the overwhelming black masses of the lower Mississippi 
valley make it the more unfortunate. If I had $150,000 
for negro education, I would first of all found an agri- 
cultural high school in one of the blackest counties in 
each of these three states. 



236 J 




PRiMAuy Grade, Andersonvili.e, Ga. 




Graduating Class, Straight University, New Orleans 



VIII. TYPICAL MISSIONARY 
ACTIVITIES (continued) 

CLASSIFICATION OF INSTITUTIONS 
E. GirW Semmaries 

THIS Is an interesting and significant variation from 
the prevailing types of schools. The American 
Missionary Association has few such institutions, 
but it has been a favorite type with several of the North- 
ern denominations. 

The considerations which have led to the establishment 
of girls' seminaries are chiefly three. They are, in the 

r^ o -1 first place, in line with the Southern educa- 
Why Special f ^ , . , , ^ , 

Schools for tional tradition which the more select groups 

Negro Girls ^f negroes inherit. Coeducation in the 
South was a Northern innovation, which on the whole has 
justified itself as the prevailing policy of the negro 
school; but the more careful parents, especially those 
having some social pretensions, frequently demanded sep- 
arate schools for the training of their daughters. Beyond 
this there is very real and urgent motive in the moral 
peril of cultured negro girls at the hands, primarily, of 
white men, but also from men of their own race. The 
more refined and ladylike the girl, the more constant and 
insidious is the attack. No social tradition protects her 
virtue; no social obloquy punishes its despoiler. This 
is the chief tragedy of the race situation. Now, however 
great the peril, it must be met on the whole by the strength- 
ening of character — not by isolation and the erection 
of arbitrary safeguards. Yet ther e are numerous specific 

[237] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

cases where considerations of moral safety make the policy 
of separate schools for girls wise. The strangest aspect 
of the situation is that not infrequently these schools are 
chiefly filled by the daughters of white men. The banker, 
the postmaster, and the leading merchant frequently show 
both a sense of responsibility and parental regard for the 
children of their illegitimate black families. Almost any 
one of our institutions could tell a series of curious and 
thrilling tales on this point. Conscience frequently tries 
to square itself by giving the daughter a protection which 
the mother did not have. Finally, girls' schools have been 
found to furnish the most simple and natural conditions 
for the training of home-makers. Not excessive labora- 
tory methods remote from the actual conditions of house- 
keeping, but the daily round of duties in a family of 
moderate size gives the most practical training in the do- 
mestic arts. The Association has always given such 
training a large place in the education of the negro girl. 

Its ulterior object has not been that which chiefly com- 
mends domestic training to the unthinking, the prepara- 
Trainin" the tion, namely, of household servants. It is the 
Mothers of the negro home which has been primarily in 
^^^^ view — the preparation of the girl for wife- 

hood and motherhood. The deepest need of the race has 
been here, a need compared with which the preparation 
of cooks and domestics is insignificant. The moral peril 
of domestic service compared with that of other callings 
open to women is a commonplace of sociological knowl- 
edge, and is made tenfold more deadly by the prevailing 
attitude of the South toward the negro women, which we 
have just discussed. The hesitancy of some of our schools 
to send out carefully trained girls to almost certain insult 
and danger will at least be understood. At the same time 

[238] 



TYPICAL MISSIONARY ACTIVITIES 

it is recognized that a poor race must learn to endure the 
moral risks involved in making a living, and it has been 
inculcated both by precept and example that efficient do- 
mestic service is honorable. The girls' schools have sent 
out a due proportion of competent servants and conse- 
quently have been especially favored by Southern com- 
munities. 

Each of these considerations was consciously present 
in the estabhshment of Allen Normal School at Thomas- 
A Typical ville, Georgia. Shamed by the incendiary 

School: Allen destruction of the Association's school in a 
Normal neighboring town, a group of the leading 

citizens of Thomasville invited it to their community. 
They gave it both welcome and substantial financial sup- 
port. Accordingly, in the founding of the school, the pre- 
vailing Southern idea of separate education for girls was 
followed. The institution was deliberately located apart 
from the negro quarters where a little school had pre- 
viously been maintained, and sought privacy on a consid- 
erable tract of land in the outskirts of the city. Around 
it there developed a distinctly residential district for 
negroes, a region of neatly painted cottages, of well-kept 
fences, and flower gardens. The whole result was just 
such a select school as one might wish for his own daugh- 
ter. Besides these provisions for protection and intensive 
Christian education, facilities were definitely planned for 
training in the household arts. Full realization of the 
ideal, however, was long delayed for lack of means. Besides 
the dormitory building there was but a two-room school- 
house, housing four grades. The rest of the work of the 
school had to go on in the dormitory. This meant the in- 
vasion of children, noise, dust, and germs. The upper 
classes had to recite in teachers' bedrooms. The much 

[239] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

desired systematic training, both in practise teaching and 
in household science was well-nigh impossible. But now, 
at length, a new schoolhouse has just been erected, and 
teachers are under appointment not only for sewing and 
domestic science instruction, but also for practical gar- 
dening and fruit growing. Thus a fine, wholesome, well- 
ordered institution is at length able to realize its ideal. 

There would be many more such institutions but for the 
fact that they are disproportionately expensive. It costs 
Why not more more relatively to run a small school than a 
of this Type? large one. The ideal of intensive culture 
in a closely associated Christian household does not per- 
mit of an institution of economical size. The Association 
is committed to the policy of the diffusion of opportunity, 
hence cannot emphasize the more expensive types of 
schools. Yet no one can learn the life of a seminary for 
negro girls without profoundly wishing that its type 
might increase. Nowhere does gracious and effective 
womanhood have more immediate and potent influence over 
earnest and receptive youth, and the results show in the 
aspirations and successful struggle of many a negro girl, 
— one of those future mothers of the race who are the 
source of all purity and all defilement. 

F. Colleges and Universities 

The negro higher institution is chiefly something else. 
With the possible exception of Howard University at 
mi lyr Washington (a school subsidized by the Fed- 

" College" eral government), there is no one of them 

chiefly Non- which has not the bulk of its resources, the 
collegiate majority of its teaching force, and the larger 

proportion of its plant engaged in work which does not 

[240] 



TYPICAL MISSIONARY ACTIVITIES 



go beyond secondary grade. The following table states 
the case for representative institutions in 1908 : 



COLLEGE 
STUDENTS 



Fisk . . 
Talladega 
Atlanta . 
Tougaloo 

Howard 




124 

29 

51 

6 

75 
190' 



This showing is wholly creditable to them, for it proves 
that, whatever their intentions, in actual practise they 
have served conditions rather than theories. They have 
turned their faces " home to the instant need of things," 
and have undertaken the work most fundamental for the 
race. If, however, undeceived by names and titles, one 
studies this group of institutions in its concrete variety, 
he will discover it to be a unique and vital part of American 
education. 

The older of the negro colleges, established soon after 
the war, were invariably the offspring of Northern philan- 
Ideal and thropy under Christian impulse, and are still 

History chiefly supported and controlled by boards 

of trust representing the great denominations. From 
the very beginning these Boards have frequently included 
representative white Southerners and sometimes associated 
them with negroes as fellow trustees. Some of this group 
' In teachers' professional course of collegiate rank. 



16 



[241 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

have come to be independent of the agencies which founded 
them and others are on the way toward it. Later, the ris- 
ing tide of negro race-consciousness brought into being 
other institutions ambitious to attain college rank. As 
a group they have been narrowly sectarian, miserably 
equipped, and of low educational standard, yet some of 
them have made real progress and are yet to be counted 
among the genuinely higher institutions. They have 
shared the ideals, at least, of the older group. 

Starting with the purpose of demonstrating to the world 
the intellectual capacity of the negro race, the higher in- 
stitutions have all found their chief motive in the conviction 
that the strategy of race development demands the prepa- 
ration of disciplined leaders. To this end most of them 
originally had to begin with the primary school; yet the 
end was never forgotten, and by virtue of it — in spite 
of their continued occupation with elementary and second- 
ary education — they are not unworthy to be reckoned as 
colleges in the making. 

In external equipment the better negro colleges equal 
many well-known and representative Western institutions. 
. Fisk, for example, has a $100,000 dormitory 

sung into existence by the world-tours of her 
famous Jubilee singers. A visit to the American Mis- 
sionary Association colleges would discover a notable 
group of chapel buildings, architecturally impressive and 
equipped with all the accessories of dignified religious ser- 
vices, including excellent pipe-organs, the one at Talladega 
being the gift of alumni. I recall a good many classrooms 
better lighted and furnished than some in which I have sat 
at old Harvard. Mr. Carnegie's inclusive beneficence has 
given numerous artistic and modern libraries to negro in- 
stitutions. Facilities for adequate science work have been 

[242] 




SWAYNE Hai.1., TAI.I.AUKdA Coi.I.EGE ChASE HaLI., FiSK UnIVERSITV 




Jubilee Hall, Fisk Umversitv DeFokest Ciiai'el, Tali, ADEiiA College 




Striebv Hall, Tougaloo Universitv Beard H all, Tougaloo Universitv 



TYPICAL MISSIONARY ACTIVITIES 

somewhat lacking, but in its new Chase Hall, Fisk has a 
science building which for architecture and equipment 
would be envied by the average college. One of the char- 
acteristic buildings of Northern institutions is notably 
lacking, namely, the gymnasium. But in lieu of that the 
negro college is likely to have industrial shops and farm- 
lands, which some will think a profitable exchange. 
Atlanta University has a splendid model school building — 
the gift of George Foster Peabody — and other schools 
have less pretentious special quarters for the training of 
teachers. Talladega College, located in the country, has 
a plant worth $250,000, while that of Fisk, by reason of 
its greater urban values, is estimated at some half a million. 

In the forty years and more of their history no negro 
college has been able to acquire even a fraction of the 
Endowment necessary endowment for its support. Every 
and Support one must annually beg the greater portion 
of its running expenses. In other words, the utmost that 
Northern philanthropy has done has not been sufficient to 
put a single school upon its feet. Talladega leads with an 
endowment of some $160,000, Atlanta reports $72,000, 
and Fisk about $70,000. The preoccupation of philan- 
thropy in recent years with industrial education has made 
the financial problem of the college well-nigh desperate. 
Tuitions are but one-third or one-half those charged by 
the more modest Northern schools. The Missionary Board 
remains the chief source of supply. 

The older and better known negro colleges, especially 

those controlled from the North, draw students from very 

. wide areas. A surprising number of North- 

Constituency „ J.1, i? n 1 • r 4-1, • 

ern negroes prefer the tellowsliip of their 

own race to the educational privileges of the famous insti- 
tutions open to them at their own doors. The systematic 

[243] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

provision of opportunities for students to support them- 
selves, in part by manual labor, and the development of stu- 
dent aid funds have made it possible for these schools to 
be attended by young people from all social classes. At 
the same time, the opportunities of higher education are in 
their very nature selective, and the negro college student, 
like the white, is doubtless above the average of his people 
in natural capacity. Probably there is a disproportionate 
number of mulattoes among them. The colleges, though 
young, tend to develop distinctive characteristics, as do 
all vital institutions. The familiar visitor soon learns to 
sense the institutional tone and atmosphere. Sometimes 
it tends toward social exclusiveness and educational dis- 
play; sometimes toward solid results. But probably 
from no group of American colleges are the regrettable 
features so largely absent. 

Christian education as interpreted by the able and de- 
voted men and women who set the standard and gave the 

_,. . ,. tone to the better nes;ro colleges, meant 

Discipline , i «> • ^ 

thoroughgomg and enective moral control. 

Discipline is therefore a sterner reality in these schools 
than in the average American college. The going and 
coming of students is under strict limitations. The over- 
sight of girls is especially conscientious and watchful. 
Because the negro as a race is unused to the strain of 
prolonged intellectual labor and also because many students 
are so poor as to be underfed, the care of health becomes 
a peculiarly insistent problem, and instruction in personal 
hygiene a fundamental part of college education. From 
the earliest times it has been a tradition that every student 
should give at least an hour of manual labor in addition 
to all other payments toward the cost of his education. 
This takes the form of dining-room and dormitory work 

[244] 



TYPICAL MISSIONARY ACTIVITIES 

for girls and industrial and agricultural work for boys, 
while a few of both sexes are employed in clerical capaci- 
ties. The strict regimentation of negro college life im- 
presses every observer. Yet its grounds are only partly 
racial. It is chiefly not because the students are negroes 
but because they are mostly in elementary and secondary 
grades. I question whether the negro student of collegiate 
development requires especial severity of discipline. 

College life from the student standpoint has many fea- 
tures in common with those of typical institutions. We 
have noted the unique insistence on manual 
labor. Naturally the constituency of the 
negro college is poorer than that of the average American 
school. This means a larger proportion of students who 
are working their way. There is probably, therefore, less 
surplus energy to be worked off by student devices. Social 
functions, however, are frequent and varied. A careful and 
rational control of the relations of the sexes is always 
maintained. While coeducation is the rule a few of the 
higher institutions have departed from it. Athletics are 
moderately developed and the " big " football game be- 
tween negro universities has most of the marks of similar 
occasions in the North. The culture agencies of college 
life are frequently superior. Lectures and literary socie- 
ties flourish. Musical organizations have a unique place 
and get magnificent results from the negro's rare gifts in 
this direction. " If you were a negro," wrote an enthu- 
siastic visitor, " your college songs would be written by a 
real poet, their music composed by a genius and sung by 
a highly trained student body whose rendering would do 
credit to the Handel and Haydn Club." The student press 
has an extensive development made possible by the frequent 
presence of printing as part of the industrial curriculum. 

[245] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

One familiar phase of white student hfe is almost totally 
absent in the negro colleges, namely, the playing of law- 
less and destructive pranks. Perhaps it would be equally 
so from the Northern college if the student knew that his 
exploits would be rewarded with lynching rather than 
laughter. 

The educational standards of the negro colleges are 
high rather than broad. Most of them have narrow and 
Educational traditional curricula, and probably not one 
Standard and absolutely reaches the standard of either the 
Achievement Northern or Southern college associations 
as to entrance requirements, teaching force exclusively 
given to college instruction, or developed course of 
study. This is simply the story of the American college in 
its beginning in all sections. The negro institutions have 
had a rare measure of that splendid personality and teach- 
ing ability which supplies a genuinely higher education 
in schools of small resources. Much of the work attempted 
has been of superior quality. Colleges no better developed 
have educated the majority of eminent Americans. I hap- 
pen to have gone immediately from a chair of psychology 
in a reputable Western college to the inspection of negro 
college work. I found standard texts in use. I heard 
classes and sometimes set examination questions. The re- 
sults were up to the average of student attainment as I 
know it in the white schools, and in individual cases were 
truly remarkable. Graduates of these colleges have now 
for many years gone in considerable numbers to the great 
Northern universities for advanced work. The represen- 
tative Fisk and Talladega graduate can make the junior 
year in Yale or the senior year in representative colleges 
of the IVIiddle States. The notable careers of exceptional 
negroes in some of the most famous seats of American 

[246] 



TYPICAL MISSIONARY ACTIVITIES 



learning are a splendid revelation of the capacity of picked 
men of that race in competition with picked men of ours. 
Nor is it always the extraordinary negro who comes 
North. Oberlin has seen a full seventh of her students 
black. The average negro is an average student in the 
Hues of his reasonable preparation. For the more accu- 
rate scientific work and for technical courses his schools 
have not hitherto been able to fit him. 

The checking of Northern beneficence toward the negro 
college is resulting in their rigorous sifting. The future 
Future of the will show its results in two directions : first, 
Negro CoUege in the acceptance of the secondary role by 
many ambitious schools which it is neither strategic nor 
economical to develop as colleges. Precisely this thing is 
taking place among the white schools of the South, and is 
being practised by the American Missionary Association 
toward its higher institutions. Second, in the achievement 
of real university standards and breadth along distinct 
lines by a small group of the best schools. The faith of 
their founders providentially wrote charters calhng for 
many-sided institutions. The needs of the race have re- 
quired broad foundations, and splendid superstructures 
will yet be built. Fisk, Atlanta, Talladega, Tougaloo and 
others will be able to raise their many departments of 
speciaHzed instruction to the highest grade and will thus 
justify the name university. 

G. Specialized Instruction 

Specialization in the negro college has not been able to 
wait upon theoretically complete preparation in its stu- 
dents. The manifold practical needs of the race have been 
too urgent. They have compelled the use of imperfectly 

[247] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

trained leaders. Technical and professional courses, there- 
fore, have been generally parallel to or assimilated with 
secondary and college studies. 

Theological. — Some of the most splendid and conse- 
crated personalities ever engaged in negro education — 
including a heroic group of Southern men — have given 
themselves to the task of training ministers ; and with 
notable results. Probably a greater proportion of negroes 
of first-class ability have gone into the ministry during the 
last generation than of whites. I can recall recitations of 
negro classes in systematic theology and in modern social 
problems which compared favorably with those of Northern 
seminaries. A large proportion of the students, however, 
are mature men — working pastors who recognize their 
own deficiencies and are seeking to remedy them. Their 
efforts by no means merit contempt. A goodly proportion 
of students are training for missionary service in Africa, 
for the redeeming of the mother continent is a growing 
aspiration of the American negro and is one of his unique 
spiritual assets. Instruction is directly adapted to racial 
needs. Teaching of Hebrew and Greek is the exception. 
The core of theological training consists in study of the 
Enghsh Bible and practical methods of religious work. 
The exceptional student who needs more can generally be 
helped on to a Northern divinity school. The theological 
departments of the American Missionary Association have 
always been recognized as entirely non-sectarian ; and 
however intense the denominational feeling of the negro 
churches, they have recognized the superior training of 
the Association's schools, and have been willing to trust 
their religious breadth. For example, take the history 
of the Talladega Theological Seminary: It has grad- 
uated and sent into the ministry sixty-five men. Of this 

[248] 



TYPICAL MISSIONARY ACTIVITIES 

number one-fourth have served or are serving other than 
Congregational peoples; five as pastors of Baptist 
churches, two as presidents of Baptist colleges, six in the 
Methodist communion — one being dean of a theological 
seminary, and another trustee of a college, while three be- 
came Presbyterian pastors. Sixteen students were enrolled 
in the Seminary during the year just closed. Of this num' 
ber one-fourth were pastors of local Methodist and Baptist 
churches, fitting themselves for better service in their con- 
gregations. And none are more emphatic in their commen- 
dation of the work of the Seminary than these men. Indeed 
many representative men of these dominant negro churches 
have had their training in it. 

Pedagogical. — The majority of secondary institutions 
for negroes offer their graduates special work in prepara- 
tion for teachers' examinations. Only a few of the better 
schools, however, have made a real beginning in the direc- 
tion of advanced professional courses. The presence of 
elementary schools in most of them affords opportunity for 
active apprenticeship. The plan most in vogue is to follow 
a three years' general secondary course with two years of 
intensive study of teaching methods and school adminis- 
tration, including a large amount of practise teaching. 
Howard University has a still more elaborate and exten- 
sive course. 

Domestic Science Training. — Beyond the required daily 
household service from all women students in connection 
with school dormitories and boarding departments, there 
has recently been an extensive introduction of facilities for 
a more scientific study of home-making in all its aspects. 
Many domestic science laboratories have been furnished. 
Model homes, for . which completely equipped buildings 
have been provided, are a distinctive feature of this train- 

[249] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

ing in several of the American Missionary Association 
schools. In them senior girls in all courses are given a 
finishing-off in housework and management just before 
their final going out into active life. Under careful super- 
vision they keep house for themselves for a series of weeks, 
each doing in turn the whole round of necessary work from 
scrubbing and laundering to planning for and presiding 
as hostess at a course dinner. 

Nursing. — In connection with the larger schools daily 
health inspections by regular officers and school hospitals 
for the care of the sick have been provided. The practical 
work of these has been expanded into a number of incipient 
professional courses for nurses. This profession furnishes 
one of the best opportunities to the negro self-supporting 
woman, the trained colored nurse having almost an un- 
limited field among the white people of the South. The 
best of these courses are approximating their standards 
to those of similar ones in the North, and extensive hospital 
practise is in some cases possible. Talladega College has 
been able to unite with the community in the establishment 
of a hospital receiving both students and out-patients, 
an ample building for which is in process of erection. 

Trades Instruction. — Missionary schools in the main 
have sharply differentiated themselves from those giving 
trades-instruction. They have insisted upon the necessity 
of general intelligence to make special skill practically 
effective, and have devised their industrial work as a part 
of general education rather than as trades-apprenticeship, 
with immediate view to a hvelihood. Many of the trades 
have indeed been in actual operation in connection with 
the building up and care of the plants of the larger insti- 
tutions and hundreds of students have thereby been enabled 
to work their way through school. A few missionary 

[250] 




CorroN Picking on School Farm 
Brewer Normal School, Greenwood, S. C. 








FOOTHAI.I. TeaJI 

Burrell Normal Institute, Florence, Ala. 



TYPICAL MISSIONARY ACTIVITIES 

schools which have large industrial equipment, like Tou- 
galoo University and the J. K. Brick School, North Caro- 
lina, have allowed a small number of pupils annually to take 
a minimum of academic work and to specialize through a 
series of years in a trade, receiving a diploma when it has 
been satisfactorily mastered. Courses in dressmaking, 
milhnery, cooking, blacksmithing, carpentry, brick- 
masonry, and stationary engineering have thus been pro- 
vided. In almost every school the various lines of repair 
are assigned to students who are working for their educa- 
tion and who in time become practically expert along va- 
rious lines. In the forty or fifty such institutions of the 
American Missionary Association hundreds of students 
are thus receiving actual training in the trades. Thus a 
system of apprenticeship has grown up, antedating and 
still rivaling the work of Hampton and Tuskegee. 

Agricultural. — The Federal government will not draw 
the color-line in education. The Southern states, therefore, 
in order to receive national appropriations for white agri- 
cultural colleges, have had to establish parallel institutions 
for negroes. Aiming as these do at agricultural training 
without thought for general culture, their constituencies 
have naturally been very crude ; their equipments have been 
meager as well and the grade of work correspondingly 
low. Yet if the destiny of the negro is to be worked out 
close to the soil, there is critical need of a trained rural 
leadership, such as the state schools do not give. The fol- 
lowing from the Tougaloo University catalogue indicates 
the range of such practical training in a well-equipped 
school : 

The attention paid to agriculture has been in- 
creased. Practical farm operations have been steadily 
carried on. The plantation now produces nearly all 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

the meat, milk, and vegetables for the boarding de- 
partment, which averages over two hundred, besides 
what is shipped to market. Eighty to a hundred cattle, 
seventy to eighty sheep, about the same number of 
swine, are yearly raised, the animals all being of good 
breeds. About a thousand bushels of sweet potatoes, 
the same of corn, one hundred tons of hay, cane enough 
for many barrels of molasses, made on the place in 
the open kettle fashion, cotton enough to show what 
can be done by intensive methods in producing two 
or more bales to the acre, are yearly raised. Several 
acres of strawberries, two hundred apple and two 
thousand peach trees provide fruit for table use, pre- 
serving, and shipping. Students do the work and the 
practical experience is of the highest value. Besides 
this field work there is school-room work in agricul- 
ture, by a special instructor, in the last grammar and 
first normal classes, and to special students in the 
higher grades. Lectures are also given regularly to 
all the grades. 

The central idea is that of uniting culture and high 
ideals of life with special skill for the betterment of rural 
conditions. Fisk has been a pioneer in the introduction of 
agricultural courses of college rank into its curriculum 
and Talladega is following with the appointment of a pro- 
fessor of scientific agriculture. 

Productive Scholarship. — A small but creditable amount 
of original work of genuine scientific merit has been done 
in a few institutions — notably in negro history and so- 
ciology at Atlanta University under Dr. DuBois, and in 
negro music at Fisk; while a large and distinguished 
group of negro professors has contributed to the scholarly 
as well as to the popular discussion of the race problem 
in many aspects. 

[252] 



TYPICAL MISSIONARY ACTIVITIES 



rV. THE OUTREACH OF THE MISSION SCHOOLS 

No mission school is merely a school; all are definitely 
intended centers of uplifting influence upon their com- 
munities. The policy of the diffusion of the educational 
opportunity means also the multiplication of such centers 
of moral life. The American Missionary Association 
schools constitute social settlements for some sixty negro 
communities. No concentration of equipment and endow- 
ment upon great mass schools can match this wealth of 
social ministration. 

In its least developed form, the mission school has a de- 
finitely parochial idea ; that is to say, it has felt bound to 
Parochial ^^J *° improve its environment. The monthly 

Responsibility report of each teacher has for forty years 
and Work asked, " How many calls have you made 

on pupils ? " " What community enterprises have you par- 
ticipated in.f' " Classroom relations have been regarded 
merely as the beginning of missionary service. Thus one 
of the most exploited ideas of a sociologizing age, " the 
school a social center," is an original and long-practised 
principle of the negro schools. The relations between them 
and the home have been most intimate. At their beginning, 
especially, many adults were enrolled as primary pupils 
and the grown-up negro has not felt aloof from the school 
as the average citizen does. His habit of clinging to his 
white folks has made the ties more binding. Thus mothers' 
meetings, sewing classes, talks on sanitation and care of 
children, besides manifold religious activities are among 
the earliest commonplaces of missionary method; and, 
however innocent of all pretensions, they have been carried 
on with sure common sense and an instinct for practical 

[253] 



CHRISTIAN EECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

results which have been an immeasurable tonic to the negro 
race. 

In an earlier chapter was noted one of the two vast 
movements of negro population, namely, that from coun- 
try to city. The city negro is a new thing 
tionofthe under the sun. Airica had no cities, nor 

Mission School had the old South. Such aggregation of 
to Urban population as it had, lacked completely the 

characteristics of modem urban life. Five- 
sixths of this population is still rural, more people being 
gathered in the cities of Massachusetts alone than in the 
whole South. Yet nowhere is the movement cityward more 
rapid or the social changes involved therein more critical ; 
and especially for the negro. All this means that the mis- 
sionary institutions must adapt new methods to meet the 
demands of the changing situation. 

Some of them have attacked the problems of recreation 
and amusement. The playground is recognized by modern 
Recreation and education as one of the most fundamental as- 
Amusement pects of the school. President Roosevelt 
told the recent Mothers' Congress, " A school without a 
playground is no school," and Dr. Woods Hutchinson said 
to the National Playground Association, " If you must 
omit either the schoolhouse or the playground, omit the 
schoolhouse." Now no one realized forty j^ears ago how 
marvelous the growth of Southern cities would be. The 
Association had no money to buy much ground and 
now that real estate is high and the vacant lots are built 
upon, our pupils are forced to play in the alleys and 
streets ; and the case is desperate. Almost without excep- 
tion our city schools are calling for play-places. 

Why do not the children play in the parks.? Does any 
one think that they are equally available for negro and 

[2j4] 



TYPICAL MISSIONARY ACTIVITIES 

Southern Parks white; that the negro boy can play in the 
closed to the streets as the white boy can ; that a group 
J^egro q£ colored young people can frequent a park 

for pleasure, or a gang of negro workmen rest there 
in the shade; that a black mother can take her child to a 
park for respite from the August heat? I do not know of 
a city in the South where this would be allowed. As cities 
have grown, have robbed childhood of its play space, and 
shut man out of immediate contact with nature, there has 
been practically no provision made for the negro of the 
substitutes which the city must furnish or else turn inno- 
cent and righteous instincts into vicious and criminal 
channels. Memphis has a negro reputed to be a million- 
aire, but he cannot use as a citizen a park which his taxes 
help to sustain. It has a beautiful tract of some two hun- 
dred acres of unimproved park, well out on the edge of the 
city, but we could not get permission to use it for an after- 
noon picnic for our Le Moyne school, even under most 
careful supervision. I have repeatedly urged city teachers 
to pay more attention to nature study. " Tell us where 
we will be allowed to take the children," they have invari- 
ably responded. 

Athletics have never held a very important place in the 
missionary scheme of education. Recently, however, some 
of our younger university men in principal- 
ships have begun to develop interest in scho- 
lastic games, arguing that city conditions make them 
necessary, and that their interest tends to hold boys in 
the school to the completion of their courses. 

The negro's pitiable lack of wholesome entertainment 
has also appealed to the schools. True, in large cities they 

^ . are coming to have race theaters, the influence 

Entertamments /. i • , • i i, ,i -n -.7- ■ 

01 which IS by no means altogether ill. Yet 

[255] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

no one can follow the year's entertainment course at such 
a school as Avery Institute, Charleston, or Straight Uni- 
versity, New Orleans, or Le Moyne Institute, Memphis, 
without realizing the superiority both of their musical and 
dramatic occasions. 

Every student of sociology is familiar with populations 
which have plenty yet starve from general underfeeding. 
The negro does not always have enough of 
any sort of food and a study of his dietaries 
proves that he rarely has enough of the right kind. 
Much of the irritability and criminal tendency of city 
populations is directly traceable to this fact. Several of 
our schools, therefore, have attacked the problem of the 
noon lunch. If you are a negro, you know, your mother 
is out at work and cannot get dinner for you; she went 
early and had not time to put up your lunch in the morn- 
ing ; so you have been in the habit of going to the grocery- 
store or to a cheap restaurant, where you have paid more 
than you ought for things that are not good for you. Some 
of our principals have realized this and have tried to meet 
the situation. Generally the work is planned and some- 
times it is done by the department of Domestic Science. 
A wholesome soup or stew is sold for five cents, and per- 
haps an appetizing dessert such as black children like. 
They sit down at decent tables and learn some of the pro- 
prieties of life while eating proper food under school 
supervision. So the noon hour passes without the demor- 
alization of children running the streets, and the school 
shows its adaptability to the new demand of the city. 

Few of our city schoolhouses close their doors when the 
children go home at dusk. Not only are there night schools 
for backward adults, for mechanics and seamstresses, or 
for teachers preparing for examinations, but frequently 

[2561 







P imi. 



CoiJ.KGE ClIOIK, FiSK UnivEKSITV 




College Y. M. C. A., Fisk Univeksity 



TYPICAL MISSIONARY ACTIVITIES 

community libraries and reading-rooms are provided. 
The most extensive enterprise of this sort is the Crossett 
Educational Library in connection with the Le Moyne 
Extension Institute, Memphis, Tennessee. This is the 

^^'■^ branch pubhc library for colored people sup- 

ported by public funds and supervised by the regular 
library commission. In many other ways Le Moyne, 
though a missionary institution, has grown to hold a place 
in popular esteem as a semi-public enterprise. The col- 
ored teacher's examinations are usually held there, and 
for forty years it has been the recognized fitting school for 
the teachers of Memphis and the whole surrounding region. 

Beyond all such enterprises conducted by the schools 
they have a large place as civic centers for manifold com- 
The Mission munity activities. Almost all non-sectarian 
Schools as and non-pohtical gatherings for race better- 

ivic en ers j^gnt meet in their auditoriums. Sometimes 
a glee club or orchestra or labor-union or any other of the 
dozen organizations is housed there. In a number of inter- 
esting cases the promising interracial conferences which 
took place throughout the South following the Atlanta 
riot found their natural meeting place on the neutral 
ground of the mission school platform. In brief, they tend 
to centralize the higher life of the whole negro community 
about them. 

With equal definiteness the rural schools have reached 
out and met the larger problems of their constituents. 
Their most effective method has been fair and helpful 
dealings with their own tenants, for the Association is an 
agricultural landlord in eight or ten states as well as a 
producer on at least two-score farms. 

Such rural work is carried on most extensively by the 
Joseph K. Brick School at Enfield, North Carolina. On 

17 [ 257 ] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

The Rural ^^^ educational side this institution is a sec- 

Social Settle- ondary school like those described in a previ- 
™^°* ous section, but its equipment is immensely 

superior, consisting of half a dozen brick school and dor- 
mitory buildings, with shops, stock, and machinery all on 
a magnificent domain of 1129 acres of level bottom land. 
No other negro farm school has so much fertile soil and 
few have so good a plant. 

There are seven families on the estate besides two grown 
sons living at home who rent land independently, fifteen 
The Brick acres each. The farms average thirty to 

School Tenants forty-five acres to a family, or about ten acres 
per working member, and are rented generally for a speci- 
fied number of pounds of lint cotton. No mortgage is 
given and instead of the endless verbiage of Southern 
crop lien contracts, there is a simple agreement of twelve 
lines requiring that no part of the crop be removed until 
the rent is paid, and plainly stipulating the amount of rent 
in cash or produce and the repairs or other betterments 
to be allowed the tenants. The most significant clause is 
as follows : " I also agree that there shall be no use of 
intoxicating liquor except for medical purposes, prescribed 
by a physician, in the house in which I reside, or upon the 
lands which I rent, and no violation of morality injurious 
to the farm, and no conduct which is not in harmony with 
the teaching of the school." Naturally this acts as a 
selective influence and with the fair treatment and excellent 
school privileges secures a superior class of tenants. Six 
of the seven families have been on the place from six to 
ten years each. Each is furnished with a clean, well white- 
washed, four-room cabin which, compared with the average 
farm habitation, is clearly entitled to be called a model 
tenement. The Brick School tenants (though by no means 

[258] 



TYPICAL MISSIONARY ACTIVITIES 

equally reliable and free from vice) are without exception 
deacons in Baptist churches. At present they furnish an 
aggregate of twenty children to the school. 

Number 1, for example, has been but two years on the 
place. He drinks and has no credit, consequently is not 
allowed to go in debt at the store. He could only pay half 
of his rent in 1907. He has no stock save a mortgaged 
horse, and his expenditures are disproportionate to the 
size of his family. His is decidedly the poorest record. 
Yet the school does not despair of him. It has taken poor 
material and made men of it. 

Number 2 has been on the school-farm eight years. 
There are three working members in his family. He paid 
his rent in full and had $200 cash surplus in 1907. His 
advances at the store average $350 per year. Though 
somewhat in debt he owns a horse, a buggy, a mule and 
wagon, a cow, and some poultry. His agricultural habits 
and methods leave much to be desired, for his grown son, 
a graduate of the school, raises four times as much cotton 
on fifteen acres as his father does on thirty and borrows 
money at the bank at 6 per cent, while the father still pays 
from 12 per cent to 20 per cent to the merchants. 

Number 3, a widow with two sons of laboring age, had 
$250 surplus last year and is probably out of debt. She 
owns a horse, cow, buggy, wagon, and poultry and lives 
industriously and comfortably on thirty acres of land. 

Number 4 has a working family of six. He drinks and 
only just about came out even last year. He is perhaps 
$200 in debt now, but has more stock than most of his 
neighbors ; namely, two horses, three cows, hogs and poul- 
try, besides a buggy and wagon. He has been nine years 
on the place. 

Number 5 has a family of seven working members. He 

[259] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

was $10 short on his rent last year, but this was due to 
serious sickness. He is probably not in debt. He has 
fewer possessions than the average man, but lives with 
corresponding economy. 

Number 6 has been eight years with the school and is 
easily the star tenant. Last year it took only half of his 
cotton to pay his rent. He is out of debt and has extra 
credit. He owns three horses, three head of cattle, hogs, 
and thirty chickens which yielded him two hundred dozen 
eggs last year. His son is studying architecture at Cor- 
nell University. 

Number 7 is a tenant of ten years' standing who has 
educated his children and now has a crop of grandchildren 
in the school. There are now six working hands. He had 
fourteen hundred pounds of cotton after paying last year's 
rent and is even at the store. He has no vices and though 
he lives closely, his large family of the third generation 
keeps him poor. He has a horse, three cattle, hogs, poul- 
try, and a buggy. An unmarried son who rents inde- 
pendently owns a three-hundred-dollar horse. 

It is interesting to note how these more than average 
tenants used their surplus last year. Number 2 bought a 
mule and buggy. Number 3 traded for a better horse and 
got a new buggy and furniture. He had also to pay a 
large doctor's bill. The model tenant. Number 7, made a 
small payment on the eighty-acre farm but could not resist 
the temptation to buy an extra horse and new buggy. Per- 
haps the conditions of tenancy here are too ideal to excite 
ambition for landownership. Nevertheless the lesson has 
not remained unlearned, as an individual case testifies. 

When the school began, twelve years ago, Mr. Hil- 
liard Phillips lived about twelve miles away on a farm 

[260] 



TYPICAL MISSIONARY ACTIVITIES 

rented on tlie " mortgage system," and lived other- 
wise as the mass of negroes are living in rural dis- 
tricts. He had the usual number of poor dogs and 
ignorant children. He worked hard and spent much 
for tobacco, snuff, and dram. He did not see how he 
could spare the money to send even one child to school. 
I reasoned with him that if he would quit his habits 
we would take his girl in school for what his tobacco, 
snuff, and dram cost him, amounting to four dollars 
a month. We allowed the girl to work out the other 
four. She came to school that one year, where she 
learned to cook all the necessary foods for the home 
family. She attended school five or six years in all. 
She is now one of the best teachers in the county. 
She is a fine seamstress and a good housekeeper. 
Mr. Phillips has bought and paid for one hundred 
and three acres of land near our school. He has built 
a four-roomed cottage on it for himself, and two other 
cottages adjoining his for his two married sons. He 
mortgages nothing, but pays cash for what he wants, 
and can get money from the bank. He raises his own 
feed and table vegetables. He has the best house and 
the best farm of his community, cleaner premises and 
cleaner crops. Whatever he is to-day he attributes 
to the influence of the school. I might name any num- 
ber of old and young men who live on their own 
places as the result of this school. Families which 
once lived in filth and crime now live in clean quarters 
and in healthful conditions. Better schoolhouses, 
better churches, better homes, good gardens, and clean 
community life. Good pictures have taken the place 
of whisky and tobacco advertisements. Sunday- 
schools, literary societies, farmers' meetings, and 
reading circles have supplanted Sunday baseball, 
chicken fights, and neighborhood dances. In nearly 

all the homes there are Bibles, in about all are Chris- 
— - 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

tian papers, in very many of them are found the Wo- 
man's Home Journal and The Woman's Companion. 

I had the privilege of attending the Annual Farmers' 
Day at Brick School one Washington's birthday. The 
A "Farmers' gathering was mostly of tenants and neigh- 
Day" Gather- bors, parents of pupils, with some well-wishers 
*^ from the village and from greater distances. 

There were morning and evening sessions with a barbecue 
and picnic between. There were four invited speakers, 
two white men, an expert from the State Agricultural de- 
partment and a visiting minister, and two negroes, a pro- 
fessor and a lawyer. The expert preached the gospel of 
diversified farming, of green-manuring and deep plowing. 
He explained the bacteriology of the soil and praised the 
peanut as an article of diet. He especially advised atten- 
tion to forage crops and the development of stock-raising 
in the South. The professor spoke of the negro's superior 
advantages in the country ; warned against the evils of 
city life, and exhorted parents to make the rural home 
more attractive. The lawyer dealt with the crop mortgage 
system. Mortgages, he said, were not an evil but an 
advantage to the borrower and lender. They were in- 
tended to be kept and should therefore be understood. The 
negro should know both his obligations and his rights and 
insist on the latter. He must have education enough to 
figure his own bills and decline to pay illegal rates of in- 
terest on advances. The minister talked about the farmer's 
life from the side of expenditures, health, and amusement. 
Education and character, he said, are more important than 
lands and goods and no people ought to be satisfied with 
mere material prosperity. Each speaker was repeatedly 
interrupted with eager and intelligent questions. An open 

[262] 



TYPICAL MISSIONARY ACTIVITIES 



parliament followed at which successful farmers told their 
vicissitudes and triumphs. All questions showed the gen- 
uine and practical influence of previous farmers' confer- 
ences and for the first time the old plantation owner, who 
had had some of these men and many of their fathers as 
his slaves, came to compare his farming experience with 
theirs as freedmen. These are typical examples of the in- 
fluence proceeding from every mission school, constituting 
a vast outreach for the well-being of the most representa- 
tive negro — the farmer. 

Every practical effort for the freedman from the begin- 
ning has had to face the staggering fact of his poverty. 

Ph'l th ■^^^ °^^^ ^^ *^^ whole fabric of missionary 

education a philanthropy which has cost mil- 
lions — but the annual conduct of every school involves 
innumerable individual cases of the assistance or relief of 
the poor. Its methods range from the sale of old clothing 
from barrels from the North (a ministry not to be despised 
since it annually involves goods worth tens of thousands 
of dollars in the aggregate) to far-reaching land-acquire- 
ment schemes, combining philanthropy and five per cent. 
The policy of the Association has been to confine its 
activities primarily to school and church work. Incident- 
ally, however, it has founded, fostered, or sympathized with 
almost every form of organized charitable service. Its 
institutions have never been called homes or orphanages, 
but have annually performed the functions of both. Every 
school grants free tuition in special cases and carries a 
minority of free pupils from year to year — some of them 
from infancy to independence. I happened to be at our 
Marion, Alabama, school one day, when the principal re- 
ceived an early morning gift of three homeless children; 
a man brought them in a mule-cart, said they were for the 

[263] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

school and departed. This is no rare experience. Many 
teachers have undertaken the rearing of abandoned chil- 
dren — sometimes legally adopting them. Probably the 
Girls' Industrial School at Moorhead, Mississippi, is car- 
rying this phase of service further than any other school 
at present. Its recent new dining-hall has a large ward 
on the second floor as a dormitory for small girls. Here 
some forty are cared for by a motherly colored woman. 
By no means all of its pupils belong to the needy class 
but some are orphans, others motherless, and more father- 
less. They are sent from as far as California, to share with 
children from along the bayous of the delta, children from 
the sawmill quarters, illegitimate children of Greenwood 
or Indianola merchants and children of prosperous, aspir- 
ing Tougaloo graduates, " the pure atmosphere of a 
happy. Christian home. The law of kindness and obedience 
is the natural law in this, to them, charmed spot. Orderly 
habits, pure language, the daily devotion, grace at each 
meal, the study of the Bible, the weekly prayer-meeting, 
the large, enthusiastic Sunday-school, the gospel service 
of song have an indescribable power." Thus, as always, 
the outreach of the mission school is also an upreach which 
tries to teach the little child why the cup of cold water is 
given him and in what Name, that he, himself, may become 
a giver as well as a receiver. 



264] 



IX. PROBLEMS AND PROGRAMS 
OF NEGRO EDUCATION 

PROBABLY more Americans hold cherished opinions 
upon negro education than upon the education of 
their own children. The average parent is bliss- 
fully unconscious- that the whole educational field bristles 
with interrogation points, yet he is very likely a parti- 
„., , san on race training. Ask the principal of 

Partisanship a New England academy or Middle West 
on Negro high school whether his institution is solving 

Education ^^^ social problem in its own community. 

He will look blank and reply that it never professed any- 
thing of the sort, and he is too busy teaching school to 
think about it. Then he will turn and express grave 
doubt whether negro education is solving the race prob- 
lem. Only in this case is the nation conscious of the close 
relation between schooling and statesmanship. Thus it 
does negro education the honor of applying to it more 
than ordinarily exacting standards. 

And this is well for negro education, which already 
need not be ashamed of any competitive showing. In 
J p. working out through conflict its own pro- 

Service to gram it has done some pioneer thinking for 

Education the whole nation. Both the experimental 

at Large ^^^ ^^iq logical foundations of the most sig- 

nificant of present educational movements — that of incor- 
porating industrial education into our common school sys- 
tem — go back to Hampton. Armstrong is positively the 

[265] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

nation's most original educational genius. Popular ability 
to appreciate current discussions of educational statesman- 
ship is the product of debates about how to train colored 
youths. 

It is well, too, that much be required of the school ; then 
perhaps much will be given to it. Only by ceasing to be 
The Propriety "lere school-teaching and undertaking defi- 
of Severe nitely to meet social aims, can education get 

^^^^^ proper regard from popular judgment. Let 

other schools meet the same test. Judge them by their 
success in solving their peculiar social problems ; then 
frankly admit that it is the business of negro education to 
be the most influential single factor in assimilating to our 
national civilization the largest and most deficient group 
of incomplete Americans. This is why it is important and 
why its claim upon patriotic philanthropy is so good. 
Philanthropy does well to insist upon a sound social policy 
in its administration, and the South is perfectly justified 
in insisting that the Northern benefactor think of the 
deep effect of his gifts upon the entire and complicated 
problem of its dual civilization. That the school wields 
immense power over national destiny ; that " through edu- 
cation society can formulate its own purposes, can or- 
ganize its own means and resources, and thus shape itself 
with definiteness and economy in the direction in which it 
wishes to move " ; ^ and that the test of social eflSciency 
must be met, we wish both to admit and to insist. 

The practical task then is to work through the mani- 
fold problems of negro education to a program which meets 
this test. 

* Dewey, " My Pedagogical Creed," p. 17. 
[266] 



NEGRO EDUCATION 



I. HIGHER vs. INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

The earlier negro schools founded by Northern philan- 
thropy were intended less to teach the negro than to teach 
Higher Edu- the nation. Their attempts were to help him 

cation an meet the white man's — especially the South- 
Attempt to g^^ ^j^-^g j^^^,g _ ^gg^ rpj^jg ^gg|. ^^g j^^^ 
Meet the 
White Man's utihtarian but ideal. It was reported that 

Test John C. Calhoun had said, " Show me a negro 

who knows Greek syntax, and I will then believe that he is 
a human being who should be treated as a man." ^ At any 
rate the argument for slavery had finally rested upon the 
alleged natural inferiority of the colored race; conse- 
quently the first task of freedom was naturally to prove 
the capacity of the race. The early-founded universities 
were thus a testimony to that capacity, a demonstration 
in the persons of a selected few of what the negro mind 
could do. As such they admirably succeeded. Hundreds 
of negroes during the reconstruction period learned to 
read Greek as part of the higher education of the age. 
Both instinct and theory maintained that such would con- 
stitute the natural leaders of their people in its new era. 
Further than that this higher education was not designed 
to adjust the race to the immediate practical demands of its 
life. There was no fundamentally thought-out program 
for leadership to follow; no clear recognition of stages 
of necessary development. Was this failure an essential 
error, or was it part of a deeper wisdom.'' We shall re- 
turn to this question a little later. 

In view of its theoretical impulse the ideals of higher 

* See Crummell, "The Attitude of the American Mind toward the 
Negro Intellect," Occasional Papers of the American Negro Academy, 
No. 3, p. 11. 



[267] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

education for the negro were simply and easily formulated. 
The motives underlying " industrial education " on the 
p p, other hand are more obscure, having emerged 

of Industrial from a more complicated course of evolu- 
Education — tion. It was originated by Annstrong at 

ms rong Hampton ; urged as a social policy and in- 

adequately practised by the South; developed and used 
by Booker T. Washington for the upbuilding of Tuske- 
gee; and given a theoretical basis by Northern scholar- 
ship. Each of these four interesting phases may be 
briefly traced. 

It is a sorry caricature of the original impulse of Hamp- 
ton to define it in the terms of a pedagogical ideal. It 
was rather a man incarnate — Armstrong himself, multi- 
plied and in action. Born on missionary soil, he inherited 
the devotion and profited by the experience of noble efforts 
for the uplift of a backward people. At Hampton, first 
under the Freedman's Bureau, a httle later with the com- 
mission and support of the American Missionary Associa- 
tion, he had to face the problem of masses of ignorant 
negroes, deficient in the very rudiments of civilization. 
His practical solution was to put them at manual work in 
connection with elementary schooling. This was the mani- 
fest, immediate solution and indeed the ordinary one in 
all the mission schools. For whatever his theories, the 
man at the front is always an opportunist — or else he 
does not stay long. But Hampton so bore the stamp of 
Armstrong's personal genius, and that genius was so splen- 
didly independent and pervasive, that its ideas and general 
methods became a shibboleth. He was wholesomely dis- 
gusted with the veneering process which conventional mis- 
sions had frequently employed upon undeveloped peoples. 
His sincerity and sense of instant need united to demand 

{268] 



NEGRO EDUCATION 



that negro education should rest upon sohd foundations ; 
yet he never urged the Hampton policy as exclusively 
right, nor doubted that the higher institutions were also 
necessary. It was a matter of emphasis. He was not 
devising a panacea; the Hampton way was simply his 
way. And industrialism is altogether too lean a name for 
his way. The personal and ideal incentives which he put 
into manual work were the secret of its chief virtues. In- 
dustrial education has never been in other hands what it 
was in his. No other has been able to mix its elements 
with such consummate art, or so to inform them with the 
Christian spirit. His instrument has mastered lesser men. 
He alone could bend his own bow. 

Worlds away both in motive and method was industrial 
education for negroes as it came to be the sectional pro- 
gram of the South. Its coming was on this wise: 

In spite of the tremendous social and political upheavals 
of Reconstruction, habit, that great balance-wheel of our 
Th S th' D humanity, held the men of that generation 
layed Demand largely to the substance of the older order, 
for Industrial There were new external relations, but those 
whose life and thought were hardened before 
the war remained inwardly much the same after the war. 
It was only with the dying off of that generation and the 
wearing away by time of habitual race relations, that the 
South began to realize how profound was the revolution 
that had befallen it. The North does not realize it to this 
day. Many of the most deeply disturbing results of eman- 
cipation were not manifest during Reconstruction, and 
this explains why the second generation of Southerners is 
frequently more bitter over it than was the first. 

The change which most impressed the South was what 
it took to be the deterioration of negro labor. Slavery- 

[ 269 ] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

trained craftsmen grew fewer and fewer, and there were 
none to take their place ; while the will to work under white 
direction seemed steadily to wane. Thus arose a demand 
for institutions which should teach the freedman to do the 
things for which he had been trained on the plantations — 
to become a skilled workman in the simpler manual indus- 
tries. The negro's education was to be vocational, with no 
expectation that he would want to change his vocation. 
Education was not conceived as a key for wider opportu- 
nity, but a tool for the negro's use in his present status. 
This was a splendid ideal in that it was a frank attempt 
to adjust men to some of the actual possibilities of life, 
but deficient in that it limited those opportunities by a 
narrow expectation. To the South the negro was naturally 
inferior, and it had not faith to approach his educational 
problem with those incentives which were the soul of Arm- 
strong's method. Industrial education by no means meant 
the same thing to him and to the South; yet because they 
favored common external forms of schooling they had the 
immense practical advantage of being able to work to- 
gether. From the standpoint of national peace and good 
will this must be counted an immeasurable gain. Virginia 
subsidized Hampton as Alabama later did Tuskegee. 
Dr. Lyman Abbott has recently observed that the most 
significant thing about them is that they are state-sup- 
ported institutions. 

The third great factor in working out the ideal of negro 
industrial education has been the personahty of that great- 
Washington at est Southerner of his generation, Booker T. 
Tuskegee Washington. Inspired by his teacher Arm- 

strong, and by liis own experience as a Hampton in- 
structor, he undertook the foundation of a similar insti- 
tution at Tuskegee for the service of his race. In the 

[270] 



NEGRO EDUCATION 



fashioning of pleas for money for this institution, and in 
its defense, largely against negro critics, he has formulated 
his educational philosophy and bolstered it with mildly 
theoretical arguments. 

He early saw that the external features of Armstrong's 
gospel — plenty of manual work for negroes — might 
. win the favor of the South. Convinced that 

ton and his " ^^^ friendliness of his white neighbor is prac- 
Temperamental tically more important to the negro than any 
Aversion to immediate exercise of political power, he has 
been content to gain that favor by holding 
controverted issues largely in abeyance and by emphasiz- 
ing what the South likes. For this " quiescence, if not 
acquiescence " in the South's race policy he has been at- 
tacked with incredible bitterness by the more militant party 
within his own race; but he has steadily and wisely, per- 
haps desperately, held to his own clue to the difficulty, 
namely, that the negro as a producer is indispensable to 
the South. He may so maintain and strengthen his econ- 
omic hold that political and social privileges also must be 
granted to him in the long run. 

The negro in the South has it within his power, if 
he properly utilizes the forces at hand, to make of 
himself such a valuable factor in the Hfe of the South 
that he will not have to seek privileges : they will be 
freely conferred upon him. To bring this about the 
negro must begin at the bottom and lay a sure founda- 
tion, and not be lured by any temptation into trying 
to rise on a false foundation. While the negro is lay- 
ing this foundation he will need help, sympathy, and 
simple justice.-^ 

On one hand this is making a virtue of necessity, but it 

1 "The Future of the American Negro," pp. 220-221. 



[271] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

probably also reflects Mr. Washington's mind. Undoubt- 
edly the material prosperity of his race is his most sponta- 
neous interest. Only by taking thought does he appreciate 
the significance of spiritual affairs. His secondary em- 
phasis upon them is a sincere thought, but an after- 
thought. He leads his race after the pattern of his own 
heart. Every oratorical period is ended with a plea for 
character and service ; but these things are not original 
passions with him as with Armstrong. One does not doubt 
the worthiness of it, but one feels the transition from im- 
mediate to remote enthusiasm. Mr. Washington's earlier 
attacks upon mere bookishness in negro education were 
never as necessary as he thought, either to put his own 
people right or to attract Northern philanthropy into 
profitable channels. They served, however, to point out 
the needs of Tuskegee. The institution, however, certainly 
did not lack positive grounds of appeal. Its marvelous 
success is the most impressive single evidence of negro 
energy and practical ability. By reason of this great 
achievement, and of his persistent and peace-loving opti- 
mism, Mr. Washington has become the official ambassador 
of his race in its group-relations to the nation. Particu- 
larly he has given the doctrine of industrial education for 
the negro national standing. 

The extraordinary appeal of his ideas to the North is 
due partly to Mr. Washington's rare eloquence and tact 

in their persistent presentation ; partly to an 
of Economic increasing desire in the North to accept 
Progress Ac- what is also acceptable to the South ; but 
N^rth ^^ *^^ partly also to the circumstance that these 

ideas fall in with prevalent theoretical ten- 
dencies. The social theorizing of to-day is largely domi- 
nated by the idea of the primacy of economic progress 

[272] 



NEGRO EDUCATION 



in human development. Men must first acquire, then use 
wealth. The effective exercise of the higher capacities of 
a people is conditioned upon their possession of a mate- 
rial surplus, which permits complete nutrition, efl5cient 
labor, a normal play of incentive, and finally the turning 
of interest to ideal pursuits. If there is any racial justifi- 
cation for Greek it can only appear after victories have 
been won through industrial education. This is the negro's 
first need. Influential Northern journals, like The Out- 
look, have figured largely in popularizing this view.^ 

In practical outcome neither the higher nor the indus- 
trial idea has had any sufficiently wide application to negro 
Higher and education. The typical agency, whether 
Industrial public or private, has been and is an elemen- 

uca ion tary school in which the rudiments of leam- 

auke more _ "^ 

Talked about ing are bookishly taught. Many more dollars 
than Practised have been spent on such institutions than on 
all others combined. The most important exceptions to 
this rule, numerically speaking, are not schools supported 
by the South, nor yet Hampton nor Tuskegee, but the 
large missionary boarding-schools which have had to main- 
tain themselves and their students largely by productive 
work. The chief administrators of these schools have done 
essentially what Armstrong did, though less consciously, 
systematically, aggressively. They have been oppor- 
tunists who, in setting out to train leaders, have found it 
necessary first to educate masses of raw material from 
which to choose leaders. Whatever the theories of men in 
Northern offices, the men at the front have become fun- 
damentally interested in this more extensive task. How 
broadly they have met it appears in detail in other chapters. 

• For a typical utterance, see Hyde, A National Platform on the Race 
Question, The Outlook, May 21, 1904, p. 169. 

18 [273 1 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

Higher education, then, has been more talked about than 
practised. There is not actually a surplus of negroes who 
can read Greek. With the exception of the ministry, sta- 
tistics show that all professions are numerically under- 
manned by negroes. A trained colored physician, just out 
of school, has an immeasurably larger opportunity to start 
out with a good practise than an equally trained white 
man. Negro teachers are proportionately only one-half as 
numerous as white ; and if quality and character count in 
the ministry there is no calling more in need of highly 
trained men. Out of the ten million negroes in the na- 
tion there are to-day less than seventy thousand in all 
schools higher than elementary — academic, industrial, 
commercial, and professional, North, South, East, and 
West. 

Nor, on the other hand, has industrial education begun 
to be adequately furnished. As practised in its chiefly 
exploited centers it has had limited scope and confessedly 
has come far short of the ideals of its leaders. Only about 
one-third of the present enrolment of Hampton (1300) is 
actually receiving industrial training either in agriculture 
or trades. Less than fifty per cent of its graduates and 
less than twelve per cent of Tuskegee's have followed the 
industries in after life. 

In an address on the trade-school ideal, Major Moton, 
commandant at Hampton, said: 

Hampton does not by any means approximate its 
ideal in trade-school work, for it is necessary now — 
and probably will be for a long time to come — to 
teach a large number of undergraduate pupils, who 
learn their trades while they are taking the academic 
course, but post-graduate work is without question 

[274] 



NEGRO EDUCATION 



the ideal toward which trade-school work should be 

tending.^ 

He added that for its first thirty years of existence, 
Hampton did not teach the trades in any adequate sense. 
Most of the purely state-supported agricultural and in- 
dustrial schools for colored citizens are feeble indeed. 
North Carohna and Mississippi have creditable institu- 
tions; a larger number of states scarcely do more than 
transmit Federal funds, leaving their negro institutions 
largely to shift for themselves. Probably there are a 
dozen missionary institutions which have incidentally done 
more in actual industrial training than has any state insti- 
tution in the South. 

To-day's need, therefore, is for many more schools of 

more sorts than the original contestants over negro edu- 

XT , f cation dreamed. This need has become unde- 

XSeed oi more 

Schools of niable by reason of the actual social and 

all Sorts economic differentiation of the negro popula- 

tion. While the white men were debating what kind of an 
education was best for him, the negro has been quietly en- 
gaging in all the activities of life, until no one who studies 
his census record or learns his varied functions in any 
representative city can doubt that he needs an all-sided 
training to fit him for his actual opportunities. 

The question of the relative emphasis upon different 
forms and types of training is now being settled for any 
p . . given locality or calling by an objective scien- 

Agreement tific measurement of the extent of negro 

of Former opportunity in it. As a practical issue be- 

Partisans tween educators the old controversy is vir- 

tually dead. Of Mr. Washington's own development Prof. 
Kelly Miller justly writes: 

* " The Negro Artisan," Atlanta University Publications, No. 7, p. 65. 

[275 1 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

He began his career with a narrow educational bias 
and a one-sided championship of industrial training 
as an offset to the claims of literary culture which had 
hitherto absorbed the substance of Northern philan- 
thropy. But he has grown so far in grasp and in 
breadth of view that he now advocates all modes of 
education in their proper place and proportion.^ 

The champions of higher education, on the other hand, 
are now consciously and confessedly emphasizing what 
they incidentally tolerated all along. Within the last two 
years the American Missionary Association has added more 
than thirty industrial teachers and equipments to its edu- 
cational forces, while its higher institutions are engaged in 
putting an educational top upon the lower forms of prac- 
tical training by beginnings in advanced technical courses. 

From the vantage-ground of the present era of good 
feeling, it will seem rash and almost impious to turn back 
Which was to ask which emphasis of the past was right. 

Right? Indeed it would not be worth while to do so 

except for the fact that the essential issues may again be- 
come crucial in the future. Indeed they are even now be- 
coming so in the movement for " vocational education for 
the masses." Was the early insistence on higher educa- 
tion and the delay of industrialism wise or wasteful.'' 
Was it true statesmanship or a sentimental blunder .-^ I 
confess that I think it justified itself both psychologi- 
cally, as fixing the negro's favorable status in the mind 
of Christendom, and practically, as the most effective 
strategy of race development. It sifted out a group of 
leaders. These gains infinitely outweigh any loss from 
the postponement of industrial training. 

' " Race Adjustment," p. 25. 

[276 1 



NEGRO EDUCATION 



The parallel between negro and woman — although at 
first thought unflattering to woman — is extremely and 
Negro and suggestively close. Both are struggling out 

Woman of a status of legal and social inferiority ; 

both suffer transitional handicaps, such as inferior wages 
for equal work ; both have made their most striking initial 
gains not at all by evolution from below. The higher edu- 
cation of women was in no sense an attempt to adjust them 
to the practical demand of their lives, but rather to extend 
the boundaries within which practical demands might grow. 
Why did woman want to go to college.'* Not better to fit 
herself either for home making or for economic competi- 
tion, but to prove that her higher capacities were equal 
to man's. She succeeded; and no extension of woman's 
activity as an economic producer has had half the potency 
for fixing her modern status, both in her own mind and in 
the mind of the age, as the fact that Dorothy Klumpke has 
discovered stars, that Madame Curie tamed radium, and 
Mary Calkins elaborated a psj'^chological theory. 

Similarly, in the light of the proved capacities of his 
select men, civilization simply cannot regard the negro 
It ■ r* d as it otherwise would. Every race is judged 

Strategy to by its best as well as by its worst. It is good 

Exhibit the strateg-y to exhibit the best first. The insti- 
tutions of higher education set the standards 
of the emerged group — the negro's finest and racially 
most significant flower. Its achievements have been the 
ideal capital of the struggling masses. From the schools 
founded by missionary zeal, race leaders came to the king- 
dom for just such a time of early trial and development. 
Mr. Washington is wrong in thinking that the negro who 
most impresses the South is the thrifty, property accumu- 
lating negro. The dominant South bitterly and increas- 

[277 1 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

ingly confesses that the ominous man from its standpoint — 
the negro whom it thinks about and fears — is the educated 
negro. Its social policy forces everj' other issue to be sub- 
ordinated to the issue of negro capacity on the higher 
levels. The higher education is still the white man's test. 
Mr. Washington is wrong also in arguing, " During tht; 
first fifty or hundred years of the life of any people arc- 
not the economic occupations always given the greater 
attention ? " ^ This might be true of a people undergoing 
an independent evolution, but not of one whose chief prob- 
lem is that of its adjustment to an enveloping civilization, 
— one both highly complex and progressive. Under the 
negro's circumstances in America the first problem was to 
fix his ideal status. Whatever their incidental blunders it 
is the imperishable glory of the Fifteenth Amendment and 
the missionary universities to have done this. 

II. THE GENERAL EDUCATIONAL PARALLEL 

For the more minute guidance of an educational policy 
for negroes the general educational situation is to-day 
American Ex- suggestive as never before. Now, for the 
perience with first time, the American school faces directly 
Industrial Edu-j ^^^ ^^ \arg-e the problem of special training 

c^&tion not 

Theoretically ^or different social classes in a democracy. 
Significant With the immigration of millions of new and 

incomplete Americans, with their stratification into social 
classes, their self-discovery, group organization, and 
various demands, vocational education for the masses be- 
comes a central issue. For Massachusetts, as much as for 
Mississippi, special types of industrial schools are being 
talked about. The large experience of the educator of 
' "Future of the American Negro," p. 228. 
[278] 



NEGRO EDUCATION 



negroes with the problem enables him to give certain ad- 
vice and warning to the nation at large. 

At first thought the very idea of class education seems 
repugnant to democratic ideas. No one was bold enough 

^ T^ to propose such an idea until it had been dis- 

Can a Dem- ft:' 

ocracy Toler- covered that whether we like it or not we had 
ate Class it already in our supposed uniform schools. 

In less than half of its range does our boasted 
pubhc school system meet any general popular demand; 
less than fifty per cent of entering pupils complete the 
sixth grade, and only three out of a hundred finish the high 
school. With the changed character of our population 
the upper grades have become merely schools of the more 
well-to-do classes. In atmosphere and general social tra- 
dition the average city high school is one of the most dis- 
tinctly marked of American class institutions. 

Furthermore, the great falling out of pupils at the sixth 
grade is not chiefly due to economic necessity. Why do 
Y 'f 't P - parents allow their children to stop here who 
vides Enough can well enough afford to continue them for 
Class Schools the seventh and eighth elementary years .'' 
o go oiin Frankly, because they see nothing profitable 
in those grades in the present schools. Pupils stop, not 
for lack of means, but for lack of interest. The discovery 
of this fact by the Massachusetts Commission is epoch- 
making for American education. Schools which more than 
half our people do not want, nor use, are class schools, 
become such by failure to respond to the widening needs 
of the varied groups of our population. The policy of 
uniformity has broken down. The only solution, and the 
one adopted by all progressive European nations, is the 
establishment of more class schools — enough to go 
around. Munich, for example, has forty kinds of indus- 

[279 1 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

trial continuation schools. The practical problem is how 
to secure an educational policy in America which shall 
offer a similar variety of opportunity, and still be faithful 
to the ideals of democracy. 

The moment of this attempted readjustment through 
the multiplication of class schools is fraught with grave 
The Danger dangers to our dearest convictions. In the 
of the Attempt letting go of old forms of democracy, osten- 
sibly in order to get a better hold on its essentials, some 
part of our faith in its spirit may easily be lost. Back of 
this cry for vocational education is an economic demand 
which lacks much of being pure patriotism or philanthropy. 
The master classes, North and South alike, want to train 
workers for a particular industrial status. They are con- 
cerned about the creation of productive agents who can 
compete with other sections or with Germany at a profit 
to themselves. They do not think of fitting human beings 
for the enlightened satisfactions of expanding lives. The 
simple-minded educator is deceived by the glitter of " in- 
creased national efficiency " and caught by the promise of 
more money for schools. There is great need to sound in 
America the noble word of the English Consultative Com- 
mittee, that no education is truly vocational which does 
not prepare for life as well as for livelihood. However 
much the schools may create special skill, only justice to 
the worker can furnish motive for efficiency. 

Thus, though all must bow in the temple of industrial 

training, we need not worship the commercial 

Education Rimmon. In the South, Mr. Washington 

must be Safe- wisely uses and cooperates with sectional sen- 

S'pict'i^ed ^™^"*' ^^* without accepting it as final. In 

the North educational policy must shrewdly 

fall in with economic demand, while avoiding its narrow- 

[280] 




Domestic Science Labor atorv, Talladega College 




Blacksmith Shop, Tougaloo LMvehsu v 



NEGRO EDUCATION 



ness and lack of heart. Democratic education in America 
will undoubtedly be secured in the future through a multi- 
plication of special schools so as to match the needs of all 
social classes. This should be cordially admitted for the 
negro. His friends should welcome all existing interest in 
his industrial education while profoundly distrusting much 
of its motive — both Northern and Southern. 



III. EXPERT INTERPRETATIONS OF THE LESSONS 
OF EXPERIENCE 

Apart from its epoch-making but untheoretical experi- 
ments with the training of the negro, America has practi- 
English and cally no experience in industrial education, 
Continental either sufficiently old or extensive to be en- 
Expenence lightening. England and the Continent are 

more fruitful, and the lessons of their policies are recently 
made available through current educational discussions, 
notably by the Report of the Massachusetts Commission 
on Industrial and Technical Education. 

All experience unites to commend Browning's counsel, 

"Oh, if we draw a circle premature, 
Heedless of far gain. 
Greedy for quick returns of profit, sure, 
Bad is our bargain!" 

Thus the application of the vocational idea to the ele- 
mentary school consists simply in keeping its general 
The Elemen- spirit in touch with the practicalities of the 
tary School child's life. The illustrations and activities 
of the school day should relate to the life of his parents 
and community and his own probable future. Problems 
in arithmetic, for example, should be such as a child will 
be likely to meet as one of the world's workers. He should 

[281] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTEUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

have nature study, gardening, manual training ; but upon 
all this educational authorities insist, on strictly peda- 
gogical grounds, without any hint of vocational motive. 
In short the vocational method as such does not apply to 
the elementary school. All experts agree that no sort of 
specific trades instruction should begin before the child 
is twelve. 

For the youth who is between the ages of twelve and 
fifteen it is agreed that industrial education should be 
The Lower distinctly vocational, but not technical. This 

Secondary distinction means that the schools should im- 

School part general rather than specialized indus- 

trial skill, and at the same time maintain in full measure 
the other elements of education — cultural, humanistic, 
and manual. The Report of the English Consultative 
Committee on Higher Elementary Schools (1906) is es- 
pecially adverse to specialization within these years. Em- 
ployers, it says, are unanimously against it on practical 
grounds. Even commercial technique (stenography and 
typewriting), which requires slight manual effort, can- 
not wisely be undertaken yet. Skill must come first in 
processes involving only the simple, coarser, and more 
massive muscular coordinations. There should be special 
pre-occupational schools for those classes of pupils who 
are later to learn trades, teaching them fundamental in- 
dustrial processes ; but technical trade-methods are neither 
psychologically nor practically as yet justified. 

In virtual agreement the Massachusetts Commission's 
Report declares that, while short-cut trade-courses for 
younger pupils at first increase their productive wage- 
earning power, yet the " child commencing at sixteen 
overtakes his brother beginning at fourteen in two years." 

More particularly it specifies: 

[282] 



NEGRO EDUCATION 



That the responsibihty of the child is not devel- 
oped is declared to be the weakness of such schools. 
The employer has discovered by bitter experience that 
the fourteen to sixteen-year-old child is physically un- 
developed, and irresponsible for any sort of work 
except the actually unskilled. 

The development of poKcy in the industrial world 
and the experience of educators shows that the pro- 
ductive power of the child before fourteen is nega- 
tive, and that it has not the power to handle any- 
thing but the simplest processes in the simplest and 
smallest way; that from fourteen to sixteen he is of 
productive power only for the large processes of 
manufacture, or for errand work; but that the child 
in those years, by teaching, may gain the principles 
of industrial work, which may be put into practise 
after sixteen ; that, therefore, the training before 
fourteen should be in the simpler practical lines only ; 
that between fourteen and sixteen it should combine 
the practical training in specific industries with aca- 
demic work, as applied to the industrial problems, to 
develop intelligence and responsibility. 

After sixteen the pupil may wisely enter upon different 
trades education, but even then the acquirement of genuine 
Higher Second- industrial efficiency is no slight task. Mod- 
ary Schools em, and especially American, industry is so 
excessively specialized that men do not live by trades but 
by branches of trades. " If they are manufacturing shoes 
of the heaviest kind in one district and of the lightest 
kind in another, the teaching must be adapted to each 
place separately." The expert further continues thus: 

We do not say to the artisan students. You shall 
be acquainted practically with the whole trade ; but 
we say, There are some things in the shoe-trade that. 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

if you claim to be an intelligent worker and desire to 
advance, you should be acquainted with. We have put 
those subjects in a general section. At the same time 
we say there are also some subjects in which you will 
no doubt wish to qualify as a practical man and get 
your living by it. We allow you to select any one 
of these special subjects. 

Thus even the trade-school has its general and its 
special courses, and even when they are finished the trade 
is not acquired. No mere school training is sufficient 
for that. Sir William Mathers, who headed a committee 
of the British Parhament to investigate industrial edu- 
cation throughout the civilized world, brought his wisdom 
to the Massachusetts inquiry. His last words were these: 

Please take notice of what I said about the avoid- 
ance of teaching a trade to the extent of causing a 
lad to say, after leaving the industrial school, " I 
am a printer," " I am a cotton-spinner," " I am a 
mechanic or a carpenter." In the first place, it is 
detrimental to the lad's own interests. He becomes 
somewhat conceited before he has got through the 
proper training by actual practise. It tends to de- 
terioration of skill and intelligence in trades, which 
can only be fully acquired through work done on a 
commercial scale. It will tend to discredit industrial 
education.^ 

Similarly, in the light of the best American experience, 
Mr. Charles F. Warner of the Springfield (Mass.) Tech- 
nical High School says: 

Whatever method of teaching trades in schools may 
be adopted, provision should be made for continuing 

* Report of the Commission on Industrial and Technical Education, 
p. 164. 

[284] 



NEGRO EDUCATION 



the training by at least one year of work under 
actual shop or factory conditions ; and no certificate 
of proficiency should be granted until this require- 
ment has been satisfactorily met.^ 

The application of these lessons to the education of 
the negro must of course allow for his peculiar social and 
AddIi f f industrial situation in the South. He hves in 
these Lessons an industrially backward section, one given 
to Negro largely to agricultural pursuits. His lot is 

by no means that of the Northern urban 
populations. Nature is inexorable ; she may be hurt 
but not hurried; the psychological objection to prema- 
ture specialization is as great for him as for any other 
race. But social policy must have regard to the pecu- 
liar environment in which he must work his way. Much 
might have been said yesterday showing that the expe- 
rience of the older civilizations does not apply to his 
case. 

But the South is not standing still. Already its in- 
dustry and agriculture respond to, where they do not lead, 
modern progress. The peculiar and critical mission of 
industrial education is to the exceptional man exactly as 
is that of the colleges. Its unique justification is that 
it serves the negro in a crisis. He is as yet economi- 
cally indispensable to the South, but his opportunities, 
especially in skilled labor, are menaced. The race needs 
industrial leaders to lead their people into efficiency. With- 
out this they will certainly fail in competitions now im- 
pending. Just so far as the South becomes modernized, 
the negro is thrust into the world's struggle. The 

* Report of the Commission on Industrial and Technical Education, 
p. 190. 

[285] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

preparation of his people to meet this struggle is 
Mr. Washington's central idea, which he has by no means 
as yet satisfied at Tuskegee. He says: 

Just now the need is not so much for the com- 
mon carpenters, brick-masons, farmers, and laundry- 
women as for industrial leaders, who, in addition to 
their practical knowledge can draw plans, make es- 
timates, take contracts ; those who understand the 
latest methods of truck-gardening and the science 
underlying practical agriculture; those who under- 
stand machinery to the extent that they can operate 
steam and electric laundries, so that our women can 
hold on to the laundry work in the South, that is 
so fast drifting into the hands of others in the large 
cities and towns.^ 

This tallies exactly with the doctrines of the Massa- 
chusetts Commission : " Our technical colleges have pro- 
duced superintendents — captains of industry ; there are 
plenty of helpers and lumpers and young labor among the 
rank and file of the army, but there are no expert journey- 
men, second-hands, foremen." ^ 

The demand, then, is for highly skilled men. No second- 
rate industrial education fits the negro's case. It must 
give him genuine efficiency in accordance with the rapidly 
advancing standards of his economic life. 

This principle immediately rules out much that the 
Inadeauacv of South understands and means by industrial 
the South's education for the negro ; such crude pro- 
Version posals, for example, as the following from 
Governor Hoke Smith of Georgia: 

' Washington, " The Future of the American Negro," p. 81. 
2 P. 90. 

[ 286 ] 



NEGRO EDUCATION 



TEACH NEGROES TO WORK 

There Is one suggestion which I desire to make, 
which I have made before, and which I wish again to 
make with reference to the negro schools in rural 
sections. 

Education to be useful must have In view definitely 
the future of the child and the condition of the child. 
I believe that the negro school, to be of any benefit 
to the negroes, ought to teach them how to work. 
I commend to the county boards of Georgia the pro- 
priety of requiring that a considerable portion of 
the time at the negro schools be given to actual labor. 
The land immediately by the schoolhouse could, in 
most instances, be utilized for the labor, which should 
constitute a large part of the training which the 
young negroes receive in the rural schools. 

The negro should be taught how to put the land 
in proper condition, how to protect it from washing, 
how to cultivate it so deep that moisture can come 
to the roots of the plants from below, and should 
be made to do the work during the school hours. In- 
struction of this kind can be given with practically 
little expense and the time taken away from book 
study will be worth more to the negroes than the time 
given to book studies.-^ 

This means that the negro child shall be taught the 
habit of industry — which is well ; but it assumes that his 
life will continue to be narrow in ambition and outlook. 
In opposition to such a policy the best interests of true 
industrial efficiency, as well as all larger human standards, 
demand that the negro child In the common school be in- 
structed as any other child is, in the rudiments of human 

' Report of an Address at Summerville, Ga., September 14, 1907. 

— — - 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

knowledge. Manual and agricultural practise should not 
be absent. All instruction, indeed, should be based on ac- 
tivity, but for psychological, not racial, reasons. No one 
can be taught to work well by being worked too young. 
The elementary schools should be vocational in atmos- 
phere, but not technical in method. And Governor Smith 
does well to conclude, " I do not pretend to have worked 
out the problem in detail." 

In negro city high schools, in which pupils of a given 

grade do not vary greatly in age from those of similar 

white schools, there are the same objections 

need such — both educational and industrial — to pre- 

Schools as do mature specialization, as European and 

Corresponding Northern experience has discovered. Actual 
Whites . 

trades technique should not be begun before 

the last years of the high school. Yet the South, while 

it professes to want the negro to be well trained as a 

worker, flies in the face of all educational counsels in not 

generally admitting his right to a sufficient preliminary 

schooling. In general it provides him no high school 

at all. 

In the rural secondary schools for negroes the physical 
and psychological objections to speciahzation are largely 
The Case of overcome by the greater age of the pupils. 
Rural Second- These pupils are frequently old enough in 
ary Schools years to begin the acquirement of their 
trades at once. This they have all along been doing at 
Hampton and Tuskegee. Nature permits it, but the social 
and economic wisdom of such a policy is open to ques- 
tion on three grounds. 

First: Modern industrial efficiency demands an ever 
broader general intelligence in the worker. England has 
found it necessary to give its Reform School boys culture 

[288] 



NEGRO EDUCATION 



studies to make good their trades skill. Germany has 
outdistanced the world commercially and industrially by 
The Negro giving the maximum of general education 

fails from Lack along with high technical training. In ad- 
^o. '^ ^ sence jesting himself to his changing social condi- 
from Lack of tions, the negro has as often failed through 
Skill lack of intelligence and integrity in social 

relations as through deficiency in special skill. Entangled 
as his practical problem is by the complicating color-line, 
he needs an education which develops the broader eco- 
nomic virtues, involving both knowledge and character. 
To take the simplest case, no matter how good a work- 
man he is, unless he can " figure " he is sure to be beaten 
cut of his earnings ; unless he has decided moral and social 
resources he will be debarred from the trade union. 

Second: Remember that the supreme function of in- 
dustrial education just now is to train negroes who can 
lead their race through an industrial crisis. 
Schools fail to This involves something more than skill, and 
Train Proper this " something more " existing schools 
Industrial largely fail to give. The American Mis- 

sionary Association employs annually more 
than fifty industrial teachers, more than half of whom are 
negroes. It has found difficulty in using the average 
graduate of Hampton and Tuskegee in such capacities. 
This is not strange in the light of the report of 190T by 
Principal Frissell of the former institution: 

Nearly seventy-five per cent of the boys are in the 
night school, giving their days to the trades or 
agriculture. Many of them leave the school after 
having learned their trades, although they have only 
completed a year and a half of the four years' aca- 
demic course. Last May, sixty-three boys were candi- 

19 [ 289 ] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

dates for trade certificates ; of these only three were 
candidates for the academic diploma ; nineteen re- 
turned to go on with their studies, and forty-one did 
not return. It is most desirable that a larger num- 
ber of trades students should complete the full aca- 
demic course and graduate with the school's diploma. 
The academic superintendent feels that while the 
trade-school boys receive too little academic training, 
the day school boys receive too little industrial train- 
ing. Progress has been made in combining academic 
and industrial training but the problem is not yet 
solved to the satisfaction of the school authorities. 

Educationally interpreted, the facts thus confessed mean 
that forty-one students with trades certificates, but with- 
out an ordinary common school education, went out from 
Hampton in 1906. If the nineteen who returned could 
have finished their academic course there, they would still 
scarcely have begun standard secondary work. Such re- 
sults are not meeting the ideals of industrial education 
as recognized by the best educational authorities. 

Might Hampton and Tuskegee not supply successful 
craftsmen though not good teachers? Yes, but not effi- 
cient industrial leaders. The inability to organize and 
communicate their special skill, and weakness in the man- 
agement of men, condemn them as race-saviors in an age 
of industrial revolution, of a " new agriculture," of an 
ever-deepening envolvement of economic in social and racial 
problems. They have been educated under arbitrary con- 
ditions — far from home problems — and are at a loss 
to apply their educational achievements to the small re- 
sources and limited opportunity of the average negro 
community. This is the common difficulty of all school- 
trained skill, which pupils of all races have to overcome. 

[290] 



NEGRO EDUCATION 



But in the case of the negro industrial-school graduate 
the defect is deeper. He has generally not acquired the 
inner means of making practical readjustments. He has 
— to borrow Dean Russell's distinction — the " educa- 
tion of habit," but not the " education of insight." 

But what the average Southerner — and probably the 
average Northerner — means by industrial education is 
the education of habit, such teaching as enables a man to 
work by rule and rote ; to work as profitably as possible 
under fixed social limitations ; in brief, to perpetuate the 
rule of some class and trade-tradition of a departed or 
departing age. This does not at all meet Mr. Washing- 
ton's sense of his people's needs, and is what Hampton 
is confessedly trying to get away from. It is not a 
criticism, then, of the best ideals of these greater negro 
industrial schools, but only of their average present 
achievement, to record that the Association has usually 
found its effective industrial teachers and organizers in 
the more thoroughly educated graduates of its own schools. 
These have frequently been deficient in technique, but such 
deficiencies have been more than made up by their broader 
theoretical background, and by the more practical char- 
acter of their apprenticeships in the daily work and actual 
building up of institutions. Such experience has devel- 
oped adaptability and resourcefulness. The industrial 
schools themselves have always found their best teachers 
among college and university graduates. Without such 
neither Hampton nor Tuskegee could run for a day. 
A Fisk collegiate graduate is now at the head of the 
J. K. Brick Industrial School, at Enfield, North Carolina. 
He has managed some highly difficult feats of rural en- 
gineering on the school's eleven-hundred-acre domains and 
has set up engines in its shops which are the wonder 

[291] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

of the white neighborhood. They ask, " Where did you 
learn it? " He rephes, " Oh, studying Greek at Fisk." 

Finally, mere industrial education fails most signifi- 
cantly because it cannot supply motive to industry. It 
is vain to teach better methods of production to those who 
can already produce more than they know how to want 
or to use. The psychological problem of inefficiency is 
really more serious than the economic problem. At this 
point particularly the negro fails. He is often content 
to live for five days on the earnings of two. He must 
be led to want more before he can be made to work more. 
The problem of consumption is prior to that of produc- 
tion, as hunger is prior to hunting. Even for, perhaps 
especially for, the poor man, an awakening imagination 
is the root-cure of practical ills. Armstrong supplied this 
dynamic by the infection of his own religious and moral 
genius. Every teacher must supply it somehow. It is the 
final justification of the cultural and ideal elements in 
education that they create incentives ; they give a scope 
to life which necessitates the efficient making of a liveli- 
hood for its fulfilment. 

No " blind alleys," then, are wanted in negro education. 
No amount of increased production through industrial 
efficiency could repay the loss to society if the schools 
should hold to lower levels men whom nature had destined 
for leaders. Georgia, in instituting the nation's most ex- 
tensive experiment in agricultural secondary education, 
was wisely aUve to such a danger with respect to a part 
of its citizens. 

We were, therefore, to arrange for technical agri- 
cultural and industrial schools of secondary grade 
which would provide technical occupational training 
for the eighty-five per cent of the young' farmers who 

[292] 



NEGRO EDUCATION 



would attend no higher school, and, at the same time, 
give a good education for citizenship ; open at the 
top, so that the other fifteen per cent, who through 
ambition and fitness should desire to pursue their 
studies in college, might do so, on equal terms with 
pupils from other schools. The law forbids the re- 
striction of the farmer's boy and girl to the three 
R's and manual labor; it forbids the shutting of the 
door of opportunity to those as the means of keep- 
ing them on the farm; but required a high school 
course equal to that offered in technical schools for 
other occupations and preparation for higher col- 
lege training.^ 

The report significantly adds: 

We want no " blind alleys " nor inferior training 
for the white youth of our state. 

Shall we understand by implication that an inferior 
training is good enough for the negro youth? No one will 
admit it who sees the race's need for competent leader- 
ship of its own, or feels its right to lay the higher products 
of its genius in the lap of a common civilization. 

All this argues that, for the negro as well as for the 
white, specialized industrial education should be based 
p, , . upon and postponed until after a thorough 

as to Negro general education is acquired. This general 
Industrial education should include the manual arts, as 

tiducation justified alike by pedagogical theory and 

vocational purpose, but should not enter upon technical 
trade-training. For the actually needy classes, earher 
specialization is justified as a social makeshift, for the 
same reason that the Manhattan Trades School is justified 

* Report of J. S. Stewart, p. 3. 

[293] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

in New York City. Even Professor Kelly Miller, author 
of a " Brief for the Higher Education of the Negro," 
advises special schools for domestic service in Southern 
cities. But nature imposes physical and spiritual penalties 
upon short-cut methods. They cannot solve the negro's 
main economic problems, nor satisfy the ideals of indus- 
trial education, let alone those of human progress. For 
a very few, in its postgraduate course, Hampton is doing 
what ought to be done, and probably as well as it has ever 
been done anywhere. For example, she has graduated 
seventeen students from her advanced agricultural course, 
which approximates the ideal of a secondary industrial 
school. Most of Hampton's trades courses, however, rep- 
resent, I believe, specialization without sufficient general 
education, as do Tuskegee's. These schools are willing to 
give the negro a type of schooling which Georgia is un- 
willing to give to even the humblest of its white children. 

On the contrary, the accepted ideals and standards of 
industrial education, as they have been worked out in the 
general educational field, agree in demanding thorough 
general preparation for technical training. The trouble 
with the negro trade-schools is that, under their prac- 
tical and sectional limitations of the past, they have not 
even been practising good industrialism. Yet a large 
part of the nation has mistaken or approved their make- 
shifts as a permanent policy toward a handicapped race. 

Now when the ideal of this chapter is popularized and 
its standard practised, when it is made the 
Ad^Sonof ^^^^^ °^ appeal for money and money is 
Ideals of spent on it when received, the old contention 

Higher ^f the partisans of higher education will in 

all its substantial elements have been adopted. 
Except in temporary, social-emergency schools, industrial 

[294] 



NEGRO EDUCATION 



education will he an advanced form of popular schooling. 
In policy and purpose it will complement rather than con- 
flict with general education. No sting of racial implica- 
tion will remain in it. Democratic opportunty will be 
allowed by groups of coordinate institutions, not sacri- 
ficed by inferior schools for the poor. The technical and 
agricultural college, neither of which yet exists for ne- 
groes, will take its place beside the college of liberal arts, 
as independent institutions or as a department of the great 
negro university of the future. 



rV. PRINCIPLES OF DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION 

In the light of these leisurely approaches, first histor- 
ical, then educational, a group of principles emerges. 
They are controlling for negro education only because 
true for all. They may here be enumerated and briefly 
characterized. 

1. Of course, democracy must be true to its genius. 
It must conceive education as a means of equalizing op- 
A Policy of portunity, of assimilating incomplete Ameri- 
Education for cans to the best national type, and endowing 
a Democracy them with their full social heredity as sons 
of this crowning age. No expression of this principle 
could be nobler than the recent declaration of the Southern 
Educational Association (1907) : 

(1) All children, regardless of race, creed, sex, or 
the social station or economic condition of their par- 
ents, have equal right to, and should have equal op- 
portunity for, such education as will develop to the 
fullest possible degree all that is best in their indi- 
vidual natures, and fit them for the duties of life and 

[295] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

citizenship in the age and community in which they 
live. 

(2) To secure this right and provide this oppor- 
tunity to all children is the first and highest duty of 
the modern democratic state, and the highest economic 
wisdom of an industrial age and community. With- 
out universal education of the best and highest type 
there can be no real democracy, either political or 
social; nor can agriculture, manufactures, or com- 
merce ever attain their highest development. 

(3) Education in all grades and in all legitimate 
directions, being for the public good, the public should 
bear the burden of it. The most just taxes levied 
by the State, or within the authority of the State or 
of any smaller political division, are those levied for 
the support of education. No expenditures can pos- 
sibly produce greater returns and none should be more 
liberal.^ 

2. Education as a social policy must follow probabili- 
ties while keeping an open door to possibihties. It must 
therefore be adapted to the special needs as well as to the 
general needs of the people. A wise democracy will not 
offer its masses merely the schools of the professional or 
leisure classes, but will multiply class schools until there 
are enough to go around, and thus one to fit each Ameri- 
can group. 

3. As an invitation to the fairer possibilities — because 
the best wealth of a nation is always its poor boys — all 
these diverse groups of schools will be " open at the top." 
The State, as destiny, must never forbid the university to 
any child because he is poor or black. 

4. A just educational policy toward any group which 
has recently suffered, or is suffering from social repres- 

* Quoted by Baker, " Following the Color-Line," pp. 284-285. 

[296] 



NEGRO EDUCATION 



sion, must seek to find adjustment, not to its present frag- 
mentary and distorted manifestations of natural capaci- 
ties and traits, but to its future completely emancipated 
mind and genius. The immediate task of education with 
respect to such a group must be to rouse and discover 
that suppressed capacity. I am afraid that the justest 
and most generous thought of the South does not give 
this consideration due weight as regards the negro. The 
ninth resolution of the Southern Educational Association 
on negro education was as follows: 

On account of economic and psychological differ- 
ences in the two races, we believe that there should 
be a difference in courses of study and methods of 
teaching, and that there should be such an adjust- 
ment of school curricula as shall meet the evident 
needs of negro youth. ^ 

This needs examination and elucidation. In the first 
place, millions of white Americans, and in the South, have 
an economic status exactly parallel to that of the negro. 
His psychological traits are largely the result of that 
status and are shared by the corresponding white groups. 
In the second place, the differences in courses of study 
and methods of teaching might easily be — in the South 
would inevitably be — such as tend to fix the belated group 
in its present distorted and limited mental expression. 

The woman-parallel is again in point. The deepest dif- 
ficulty in applying the ideal of vocational education relates 
to her. What is woman.? At any rate not a completed 
being. President Stanley Hall, the psychologist, ventures 
an " Outline of a higher education for girls based on their 
nature and needs, and not on convention or the demand 

^ Quoted by Baker, "Following the Color-Line," p. 286. 

[297] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

of feminists." Her scientific training, for example, should 
omit the theoretical rigidity and advanced technique of 
the man's and should lay stress on the moral and es- 
thetic aspects of nature, " the poetic and mythic factors, 
and some glimpses of the history of science." ^ And all 
along the line her education should suit her psychical 
peculiarities. But immediately comes the anthropologist, 
Professor Thomas, to exploit the " adventitious character 
of woman," asserting that in many of her seemingly most 
distinctive traits she is not a natural but a social product. 
Her characteristic mentality is only her inner response 
to her social status. Like the negro she gains her ends 
by deceit and Hes, because those are the natural — and 
legitimate? — resources of unprivileged classes. She is 
an instinctive dinger, as is the negro, but this reflects her 
long-time economic dependence. Even her alleged inca- 
pacity in the most rigid scientific fields. Professor Thomas 
argues at length,^ is a cultural rather than a natural lack. 
In short, the mind of woman is the result of centuries 
of social pressure. Man's thought of her and her con- 
sequent thought of herself have restricted and artificial- 
ized her instinctive character, but have not maimed her 
mind beyond repair through freedom and opportunity. 
Professor Thomas' point is clinched by a conclusion from 
a highly scientific study hy a woman of the psychological 
differences of the sexes.^ A program for the education 
of woman cannot therefore be made until the true woman 
is recovered, and President Hall speaks too soon. The 
evident first business of a scheme of feminine education 
is to find the true woman. 

' Cf. "Adolescence," vol. ii., ch. xvii. 
^ " Sex and Society," pp. 30-61. 
3 Ihid, p. 257. 

[298] 




Theological Gradua-jes, Talladkga College 




Trained Nurses, Talladega College 



NEGRO EDUCATION 



In his chapter on " The Mind of Woman and the Lower 
Races," Professor Thomas directly touches on the present 
application of the argument to the negro. The general 
conclusion is, " Differences of sex will, I think, hold also 
for differences of race." 

Well, then, a program of negro education must wait 
upon the recovery of the true negro, upon the unloosing 
of his repressed capacities, the unbinding of his normal 
self. First find your man. This should be the immediate 
business of education; for lack of it any policy toward 
him is sure to blunder. " What a thing is when its be- 
coming is completed, that we call the nature of a thing," 
said Aristotle. Because strong sentiment in the nation 
persistently urges a type of training which would fix the 
negro in his incompleteness, let the educator, patriot, an- 
thropologist each beware. This is the crux of the 
problem. 

5. When this central issue is secure it freely follows 
that the immediate economic and practical needs of any 
historically peculiar or socially handicapped group of 
Americans, such as the juvenile delinquent, the Indian, the 
immigrant's child, the unskilled worker, may dictate a 
temporary policy of special training for them. The ac- 
tual employment of such a policy can be justified only 
by a detailed sociological study of their actual situation. 
But such a study reveals that the negro's case is not 
parallel to these cited. His life is infinitely broader than 
that of any social group. His millions contain groups 
of all degrees of development. The only analogy for him 
is the analogy of white population in its entirety. He 
needs not one but all kinds of American education for the 
diverse grades and classes of his people. 

6. The profoundest educational right of any people 

[299] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

is the right to have its inner resources of character util- 
ized for its own uphft. For the teacher of negroes there 
should be no commentary here like his own heart. 

What keeps the exceptional and gifted man at liis task, 
— a task so appeahng yet disheartening as that of the 
education of negroes under American conditions? What 
is the secret of victory and patience for Strieby or Curry, 
Armstrong or Cravath? Nothing short of some personal 
version of that experience to which Matthew Arnold testi- 
fies in his " East London." 

"I met a preacher there I knew, and said — 
'lU and o'erworked, how fare you in this scene?' 
' Bravely ! ' said he ; ' for I of late have been 
Much cheered with thoughts of Christ, the living bread.' 

O human soul ! as long as thou canst so 
Set up a mark of everlasting light. 
Above the howUng senses' ebb and flow. 

To cheer thee, and to right thee if thou roam — 
Not with lost toil thou laborest through the night ! 
Thou mak'st the heaven thou hop'st indeed thy home." 

In other words, the deepest need of any man is the need 
to have the inner resources of his own character released 
to energize his service. Equally the deepest need — yes, 
right — of any race is to have its inner resources utilized 
for its own redemption. It is the only way. 

As to the negro, this is denied. He is contrasted, to 
his great discredit, with the Indian. The Indian thwarted 
all attempts to enslave him by dying. When he could 
no longer be free he ceased to live. The negro, on the 
contrary, thrived in servitude, thus showing, it is alleged, 
his essentially servile nature and adaptibility to external 
compulsion. 

But there is more than one way to resist oppression, 

[300] 



NEGRO EDUCATION 



as a glance into any schoolroom shows. Here and there 
one finds the child rebel, the Indian fiercely resisting by 
overt acts all encroachments upon his personality. The 
more usual type of uncontrolled pupil is the mind-wander- 
ing, docile child, who conforms outwardly and inwardly 
follows his own devices. The proud teacher, deceived by 
appearances, may exclaim, " See my well-behaved and stu- 
dious thirty," when, all told, she has hardly the equivalent 
of one child at work. Nine-tenths and more of each, 
though physically present, is spiritually absent — on the 
ball-ground or some other juvenile Island of the Blessed. 
Limbs and lips are at school but hearts are far afield. 

Woman, in the main, has followed the negro's rather 
than the Indian's method of resisting oppression. There 
have been a few feminine revolutionists and radical inno- 
vators ; most of the sex have seemed to yield — and con- 
trived to manage. Woman has ruled by indirection, but 
she has ruled. 

Now the lazy, adaptive negro has adjusted himself to 
necessity exactly as our wives and children chiefly do. He 
has given the minimum of work and obedience necessary 
to save his skin, and has stubbornly maintained the free- 
dom and integrity of his own inner life. In labor power 
one Northern worker was worth a half dozen of slave- 
time plantation hands or house servants. I know nothing 
more creditable to the negro's humanity than this. He 
has never worked well under compulsion, and, before God, 
I hope and beheve he never will. Only the full oppor- 
tunity of American manhood will prove sufficient to sum- 
mon the whole negro to life's task. 

Subject groups, whether children, women, or dependent 
races, while they cannot be controlled unless their own souls 
are enlisted in the task, may be and have been warped and 

[301] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

distorted by external pressure. It can hinder but cannot 
help. It never succeeds. The modern school confesses 
that when it fails to awaken the child's own interest its 
failure is absolute. Some are bold to believe that the 
world-wanderings of the " new woman " will lead her back 
to many of her old tasks, but if so it must be because her 
heart comes around to them again. Her return cannot be 
of compulsion. At all hazards she must follow the inner 
light. 

The question of incentive is equally central for negro 
education. Vocational efficiency in the long run must be 
the same as social efficiency. Train, indeed, for the child's 
" actual condition in life," but be quite sure that condi- 
tion is understood. We inhabit many-storied houses and 
our true calling is to occupy them throughout. The 
effort to make any man a good worker without making 
him a full man will fail ; and could it succeed, it would 
but give us a bhnded Samson grinding in the prison- 
house of spiritual bondage. 



302] 



X. THE OLD MEN OF THE 
MOUNTAINS 

FOR six years the fortunes of the author of this book 
were identified with a prosperous and progressive 
border city of thirty thousand people. It was 
located on two trunk lines of railway, giving unusually 
direct access to the four corners of the Union. It sup- 
ported several worthy institutions of higher learning and 
was surrounded by a county of great agricultural pro- 
ductiveness; yet most of the tributary country within 
a radius of a hundred miles consisted of a rough, infertile 
land, inhabited by a decidedly rude and under-developed 
population, an offshoot of the larger Appalachian stock. 
No equal area east of the Great Plains had so small a 
railroad mileage. I have sometimes taken friends, repre- 
sentatives of completer civilizations, on hunting or fishing 
trips through this back country and have afterward been 
chagrined at the accounts of it they have written for 
Eastern papers — as though it represented my environ- 
ment and opportunities. They described the picturesquely 
primitive as they saw it, but forgot to record the common- 
place — that there were also electric lights, colleges, 
wealth, and an extremely self-conscious life which thought 
itself as good as any in America. Having thus suffered 
with their kind, from the confusion of the injudicious, I 
am the more anxious to speak of the people of the South- 
em Appalachians with discrimination, justice, and pro- 
found appreciation. 

[303] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 



I. THE PROBLEM OF THE MOUNTAINS 

The Southern Appalachian region is roughly six hun- 
dred miles long and two hundred miles broad. It includes 
GeoOTaphical* ^"^^ hundred and twenty-six counties in nine 
Southern states as follows: Maryland 4, West Vir- 

Appalachians ginia 35, Virginia 42, eastern Kentucky 
28, eastern Tennessee and the Cumberland Plateau in 
middle Tennessee 46, western North Carolina 24, north- 
western South Carolina 4, northern Georgia 26, north- 
central Alabama 17. Their combined area is 101,880 
square miles, or twice as large as the state of New York, 
and their gross population nearly four millions of people 
(1900). 

Their average civilization is decidedly below that of 

the general standard of the nation, but the submerged 

fy , minority, whose excessive backwardness 

Unequal "^ ' 

Development greatly depresses the average, is but a 
of their fragment of the whole. Within this area 

ivi za ion jj^^ some of the most vigorous and pro- 
gressive of Southerners. Not only is the great Appa- 
lachian Valley, running from Pennsylvania to Tennessee, 
one of the most ancient of national thoroughfares and a 
most poetical, productive, and beautiful region, but In 
the Appalachian province are located mighty industrial 
cities like Knoxville and Chattanooga, Tennessee ; Bristol, 
Virginia; and Birmingham, Alabama; while just at its 
southern border Hes Atlanta. There are famous health 
resorts Hke Asheville, North Carolina, with Its magnificent 
Vanderbilt estates adjoining. Appalachian Tennessee 
even boasts of four ancient colleges, locally renowned and 
widely useful, three of them dating back to 1795. Much 
of the capital which has developed the industries of these 

[304] 



THE OLD MEN OF THE MOUNTAINS 

cities and smaller centers is from the North and the mix- 
ture in them of Northern and Southern population and 
ideals against the mountain background creates one of 
the most interesting and stimulating of American envir- 
onments. Yet even these progressive centers tell the tale 
of their human sources of supply. Knoxville has 71.81 
illiterate white children of native parents per thousand, 
Chattanooga 39.3, Atlanta 34, against 8 per thousand in 
the most backward of the Northern cities, and then only 
in regions notoriously affected by Southern immigration.-^ 
Very unequally then, within this general area, have the 
mountains been a barrier to participation in the best of 
national life. We must find out to what degree and dis- 
cover the particular local areas of backwardness. 

A glimpse at the population maps in the volumes of 
the last census reveals the fact that the mountains are 
Areas of peopled to an average density about that of 

Special the agricultural states of the Mississippi 

Backwardness Valley and of the rural South. The much 
exploited feud-counties of Kentucky, for example, have 
about the same population per square mile as Iowa. Only 
in West Virginia, in small areas including the great 
Smoky Mountain between North Carolina and Tennessee, 
and in parts of the Cumberland Plateau in middle Ten- 
nessee is the population notably slight; while, just be- 
tween these two last-mentioned areas, the valley of the upper 
Tennessee and its tributaries has been since 1810 one of 
the most densely populated of American regions of equal 
area. Manifestly, then, isolation, as a ground of back- 
wardness, is present in very unequal degrees. Other cen- 
sus maps show great unevenness in the distribution of 
improved land, of agricultural productiveness, and of 
» Census Bulletin 26, p. 53. 
20 [ 305 ] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

transportation facilities, while the statistics of manufac- 
turers show similar irregularities. Wherever there are 
people, farms, railroads, factories, there is likely to be 
education, an ordinary development of civilization, and 
a fair degree of progress ; but where deficiencies in all 
or most of these things coincide in the same area — where 
there are few people, little productive land, no markets, 
no industrial development — one finds, in all of these nine 
Appalachian states, whole counties of extreme backward- 
ness of life. Throughout all of this area there exists also 
a submerged class, the product of former isolation and 
lack of opportunity, in the midst of the generally hopeful 
population. Manifestly the true strategy of philanthropy 
is to find out these particular areas of need and to devise 
help for especially backward classes. 

The various attempts at a numerical estimate of these 

... . . backward classes are more interestins; than 
Attempts at . . ° 

Numerical instructive. To tell the truth, nobody 

Statements of knows ; the statistical means of finding out 
do not exist. The following quotation cer- 
tainly implies a gross overstatement : 

Berea's work to-day has an absorbing interest to 
the scholar and the patriot. The institution has dis- 
covered three million British descendants who have 
been in a very real sense " lost " in the Southern 
mountains. 

Naturally, it is possible to quibble over the meaning of 
being lost, but in- no just sense does three-fourths of the 
Southern Appalachian population constitute a specially 
needy class or call for national philanthropy. On the 
other hand the following from an experienced educator 
in the mountains as surely understates the case: 

[306] 



THE OLD MEN OF THE MOUNTAINS 



Of the four million inhabitants of the region per- 
haps only one-tenth are very backward. The rest 
compare favorably with the inhabitants of any other 
section. 

The physiographer, Brigham, speaks of two millions of 
people of pure American stock waiting to be assimilated 
to modera conditions.^ President Samuel T. Wilson of 
Maryville College, Tennessee, the chief Presbyterian au- 
thority in this field, writing from a vantage-point of life- 
long intimacy and educational service for the mountain 
people, ventures to guess that there may be from a quar- 
ter to half a million of the lowest and really degenerate 
class.^ 

President Wilson very properly defends his people 
against the charge of generally inferior character and 
Compensations intelligence, and insists that mountain back- 
of Back- wardness has compensations in the greater 

wardness ruggedness of body and mind preserved 

there, the resourceful strength and the absence of urban 
vices and follies, with their train of too strenuous nerves 
and tempers. No one who knows the mountaineer will 
fail to make these allowances, and every one who writes 
of him should insist that his readers make them also. 
Illiteracy by no means always indicates lack of mental 
alertness. I recall Uncle Jimmy Yeakley, who could 
neither read nor write, and did n't much need to. He 
could remember the exact terms of every transfer of land 
back to the beginning of records. As telephone-king of 
his region he had strung hundreds of miles of wire from 
tree to tree over which to talk with his neighbors; thus 
avoiding the necessity of writing. No one who had ever 

' Brigham, " Geographical Influences in American History," p. 323. 
* "The Southern Mountaineer," p. 38. 

[307] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

undertaken business dealings with him doubted Uncle 
Jimmy's mental capacity afterward. 

How far is the backwardness of the mountains due to 
inferiority and how far merely to lack of opportunity? 
jj , . This is their deepest problem. To some ex- 

Backwardness tent undoubtedly the mountain environment 
due to In- has been selective, choosing for itself such 

enon y types of mind and character as preferred 

and were fitted to its ruder life. To get the bearings 
of this problem we need to take a more accurate look 
at the physiographical peculiarities of the Appalachian 
area. 

The Great Appalachian Valley is recognized by geog- 
raphers as the axis of that mountain system. For de- 
tailed descriptions of its internal relations the reader must 
consult special authorities ; -^ but it is at least possible 
to note that all the true mountains — typified by the 
peaks 't)f the Blue Ridge of North Carolina — lie to the 
south and east of this valley; while a larger mountainous 
area lying to the north and west of it — the so-called 
Alleghany and Cumberland " ranges " — is really only 
a prolonged plateau. Now, curiously, It is not in the 
true mountains with their higher peaks, their broader and 
deeper valleys, but on the scarred and broken top of this 
long-weathered plateau that by far the greater part of 
the needy mountain population Hes. They crossed over 
and around the true mountains, passed the fertile and 
smiling valley, and paused in the rugged Cumberlands, 
almost in sight of the Blue Grass and rich Mississippi 
plains — hke Moses just outside of the Promised Land. 

Why did they not go on and complete the crossing, the 
most marvelous and epic movement of American history? 

' Brigham, "Geographical Influences in American History," p. 81. 
[3081 



THE OLD MEN OF THE MOUNTAINS 

Why did they stop in the mountains ? Were they too weak 

to go on? Was it always the " tragedy of the broken 

„, ,_ axle"? Were they afraid? All of these. 

The Moun- ^ , i i i ... , 

tain People ^^ ^'^^ ^"^ hand, the mountain barrier caught 

cannot be and held such people as lacked physical re- 

7 sources to overcome them. On the other hand, 

to some extent at least, it sifted the westward 
emigrant, and kept the less energetic and resourceful for 
its own. And, indeed, the transition was not easy. It 
took daring to meet the strange conditions of the plains, 
to abandon the mountains for the prairies. The tradition 
of the author's family tells that when its forbears left 
the Tennessee mountains for a prairie state, they hunted 
out a spot in the bluffs of the Mississippi River and 
grubbed out a farm from the timber while thousands of 
clear acres were at hand for the asking. For the moun- 
tains were doubly indispensable to the imagination. They 
both overawed and won the hearts of their children. 

Thus, in its most backward areas, the mountain stock 
represents a part of the original colonial emigration whose 
hearts failed at the sight of the prairies ; who loved hunt- 
ing and fishing and the rude old ways. The conserva- 
tive element and the incapable element mixed together, be- 
came further depressed by the poverty of their land, and 
were fixed in the mental traits of reckless but curiously 
unadventurous men. We can never disentangle the in- 
fluences at work or give them numerical expression ; but 
all educational effort in the mountains discovers plenty of 
natural capacity only awaiting opportunity, along with 
not a little hopeless stuff sifted out and left behind by 
the sturdier stream of American progress. Thus part 
of the mountain shiftlessness may be removed by the in- 
struction of one generation in rural economy, part rests 

[ 309 ] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

back on the original shiftlessness which left its victims on 
the far side of the hills from civilization; part of its 
incapacity utterly disappears when the tools of progress 
are put into the hands of its youth, part persists in a 
deep-seated nervelessness and apathy before the more com- 
plex demands of modem life* No more than the negroes 
can the mountain people be saved wholesale. The offer 
of opportunity only compels them to register their inner 
differences and thus completes the ancient sifting. 

In terms of general educational need the problem 
Statistics of ^^ ^^^ mountains has been most carefully 
Educational measured by the Southern Educational 
Deficiencies Board. 



In that portion of West Virginia, Virginia, Ken- 
tucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, 





LITERATES 


ILLITERATES 


PER CENT 
ILLITERACY 


West Virginia 

Virginia 

Kentucky 

North Carolina 

East Tennessee 

South Carolina 

Georgia 


202,459 

107,790 

93,530 

102,918 

134,138 

42,577 

44,813 


24,229 
20,422 
25,851 
25,460 
30,127 
6,572 
9,651 


10.68 
15.94 
21.65 
19.83 
18.34 
13.37 
17.72 


Totals 


728,225 


142,312 


16.34 



and Georgia?, contained between the foothills of the 
Blue Ridge on the east and those of the Cumberland 




Primitive Industry of the Mountains 




Modern Industry ou the New South 



THE OLD MEN OF THE MOUNTAINS 

Mountains on the west, there were in 1900, in a total 
number of 870,537 male whites twenty-one years of 
age, over 142,312 or 16.34 per cent, who could not 
read and write. The table herewith gives the figures 
for the Appalachian section of each state. 

Figures for illiteracy may not be very accurate, but 
where sixteen per cent of the white voters report 
themselves to the census as illiterate, it means that at 
least fifty per cent of the white population over ten 
years of age is wholly without letters.^ 

The case of a typical mountain county, Harlan, Ken- 
tucky, reveals both extreme educational poverty and rapid 
A Typical recent progress. This county has fifty-nine 

Kentucky districts, none of which previous to 1904 had 

County ^ graded school nor one with as much as a 

six months' term. Even according to Southern standards 
its teachers were miserably prepared. Half of its fifty- 
three schoolhouses were built of logs, and the total value 
of the fifty-three was less than ten thousand dollars. Not 
three-fourths of its school population was enrolled, and 
the average attendance was but forty per cent of the 
enumeration. Its only graded and reasonably efficient 
schools were two conducted by missionary societies, each 
of which had four or five teachers. It will be noted that 
the county did not lack for schoolhouses, such as they 
.were. Indeed there were altogether too many. But meas- 
ured by any reasonable standard its educational deficien- 
cies were awful to contemplate. Its school period was far 
too short, its teachers wofully inferior, its facilities ridicu- 
lously inadequate; besides, half of its children were not 
using even such opportunities as were afforded. Probably 
more than fifty per cent of its white population was illit- 

' Quoted by Wilson, " The Southern Mountaineers," p. 69. 

rsiTi 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

erate. That it might have been better is proved by the 
rapid progress since 1904. In a single year, under the 
inspiration of the general educational revival in the South, 
and with the aid of state funds, ten schools lengthened 
their terms to over six months, a considerable proportion 
of teachers acquired higher grade certificates, salaries 
were decidedly advanced, seven new schoolhouses were 
built, and the average attendance was raised to seventy- 
seven per cent of the enrolment. Though desperately 
poor, Harlan county chiefly needed and needs stimulus 
from without and a practical expression of its solidarity 
with the more favored regions of its state. 

II. HOW THE MOUNTAIN MAN LIVES 

It will help our understanding of the life of the moun- 
tains to study Harlan county further as one of its char- 
acteristic seats. Its many streams constitute 
The Head- 
waters of the ^^^ head-waters of the Cumberland river, 

Cumberland, Surrounding their valleys rises an almost 
a Typical unbroken circle of mountains cut only by 

distant gaps and otherwise crossed, if at all, 
by incredibly rough bridle-paths. Within this encircling 
barrier of lesser mountains lies the great Black Range. 
On either side are Piedmont valleys, themselves carved 
by streams into lesser valleys two thousand feet and more 
deep. The mountains have narrow, winding crests and 
steep sides, interrupted here and there where some ledge 
of more resistant rock has remained to uphold a bench or 
"cove" of gently sloping land just above it. Along the 
lower courses of the greater valleys are narrow strips of 
tillable bottom land which disappear higher up into broken 
gullies. Farming is crowded out of these too-narrow quar- 

[312] 



THE OLD MEN OF THE MOUNTAINS 

ters onto the lower slopes and even the high benches of 
the mountains. 

My first incursion into this " Lonesome " country was 
on a magnificent morning in November. Before light I 
had left the regular railway on the Virginia side, had 
boarded a coal company's train for a dozen miles' ride 
over a rough spur of track, and had been met at the mines 
by the principal of the Black Mountain Academy. The 
mist was still in the valleys when we took the mail-carrier's 
trail leading over the very ridge of the Black Range. 
More than once we were forced to take to our feet and 
hands while the horses scrambled up the trail ahead of 
us. Two hours of breathless climbing brought us to the 
top, where, through magnificent portals of gray rock, we 
passed into Kentucky and began the descent, the path 
soon finding and following the windings of a mountain 
stream. Into this snug nook even winter had failed to 
penetrate. We rode under great chestnuts still in leaf and 
just dropping their nuts. The wealth of laurel and rho- 
dodendron fohage in the deeper ravines gave the land- 
scape almost a look of spring, while all along the way the 
holly flamed under its burden of berries. 

The ragged flanks of the mountain rising on either 
side of the trail nowhere afforded a level space as large 
The Moun- as a city lot, yet we passed no fewer 
tain World than a dozen cabins in half that number 

of miles. Tliis is the mountain home. It clings to 
its steep slope ; frequently it consists of but one room ; 
usually it is built of logs and rough hand-split shingles, 
its chinks and chimney being daubed with mud. It is uni- 
formly windowless, though perchance furnished with a 
solid shutter or two. Its surroundings are less slovenly 
but poorer than those of any negro settlement I have 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

ever seen. Attached to each house is a half acre or less 
of sickly corn patch, clustered among the gaunt and pro- 
testing ruins of the forest. The Indian was cruel to trees 
as well as to man, and the mountaineer clears his field by 
the savage's wasteful method of girdling the standing 
timber, which remains until it rots and falls. All " carry- 
ing " is done with a sure-footed ox and sledge, for no 
wheeled vehicle could possibly be handled on these steep 
hillsides. Behind the cabin huddles a rough shelter of 
logs and pine boughs for the single work-beast. The only 
other stock, a scant dozen of razor-back pigs, sweeten but 
rarely fatten on beechnuts and the plump acorns of the 
chestnut-oak. This is mountain agriculture. 

On the lower slopes we pass lumbering oxen, slowly 
dragging great tulip logs to the skidway, whence they 
go crasliing down to the stream below to wait a " big tide," 
which will float them to the lumber mills on the lower 
river. This is mountain industry. 

Suddenly the trail turned and showed a glimpse of a 
cluster of cabins below. " There," exclaimed the Princi- 
pal, " is n't that a fine spot for a town? " I agreed that 
it was beautiful but ventured a suggestion that the space 
was too narrow to afford much room for growth. " Well," 
said he, " this is the largest level spot in the county." 
Such is the " pent-up Utica," the mountain town. 

But it is not fair merely to cross over the mountain ; 
one must also ride up the valley. This is the thorough- 
A Ride up fare of the county, a way infrequently trav- 

the Valley ersed by wheels. The horses splash through 

Poor Fork innumerable times, while pedestrians cross on 
logs or leap from stone to stone. Manifestly this bridge- 
less road might be cut into fifty sections by an hour's 
thunder-storm. After an ordinary summer freshet I have 

1314 1 



THE OLD MEN OF THE MOUNTAINS 

squatted on the river bank for half a day and watched 
the gathering knots of mountaineers waiting for the water 
to fall. A similar group gathered on the other side. They 
showed no evidence of haste, little speculation, and no in- 
clination to take risks. We simply waited until the mail- 
carrier, whose pay was at stake, ventured to try the ford ; 
then the rest followed after. Such contingencies are not 
conducive to school going, and " Reckon ye kin ford the 
branch to-day.? " discourages much social intercourse. 
Many of the valley homes, however, are in striking con- 
trast to those of the slopes and shoulders of the moun- 
tain. Here is compressed all that that mountain calls 
wealth. Where the bottom-land widens, agriculture may 
yield a fair subsistence or even a rude plenty. Two-story, 
soHdly framed houses are not Infrequent. In some of 
them I have seen and envied bits of colonial furniture 
or plate, reminiscent of tidewater Virginia. The spinning- 
wheel still hums and the loom clatters, keeping alive the 
fireside industries and preserving a tradition of beauty 
in weave and color. Farm touches farm for miles along 
the valley, and some traveler or other on his jogging 
mule is rarely out of sight. At intervals one passes a 
rude cabin country store — for the valley is Broadway as 
well as Fifth Avenue — or a grist-mill with great, pic- 
turesque water-wheel. The schoolhouse is not absent. In- 
deed, as we have noted, the county has fifty-three, most 
of which stand in the valley. The Principal reports 
that on his recent round of eighty miles to solicit stu- 
dents he passed seven. Four were built of logs and three 
of slabs ; four had windows, two had shutters, and one 
had no light save from the open door. There were 
two stoves for the seven schools and two blackboards ; 
while in two the only seats were rough planks laid across 

[3151 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

stones. We passed, however, one framed and neatly painted 
building revealing the uplifting influence of the academy, 
and of the general educational revival. 

Down the valley, at the confluence of Poor Fork and 
two other streams, is the county seat, the mountaineer's 
metropolis. Its type is well depicted in Fox's 
Seat; Con- " Trail of the Lonesome Pine." Its central 
tacts with the features are a squat court-house of brick and 
Larger World ^^ jail in which rough-hewn stones set a few 
inches apart in its frowning walls, like the embrasures of 
a fortress, serve in lieu of windows and bars. Perhaps 
two dozen frame buildings, with a single corner brick store, 
house the merchandise of the community. Blacksmith and 
harness shops are in evidence, for the hitching racks are 
hned with horses, and the streets (there are almost no 
sidewalks) are filled with booted men. There is a hotel, 
chiefly frequented by lawyers at court time or by an oc- 
casional drummer ; a small sawmill ; frame houses for the 
merchants and county ofiicials, while the cabins of the 
poorer population crowd back into the gullies or hide on 
the mountainside. There is probably a doctor or two 
and several lawyers, but no regular dentist and no editor. 
President Frost of Berea used to tell of twenty contigu- 
ous mountain counties without a printing-press. Four or 
five church-houses may be found, in varying stages of 
dilapidation ; but not one will have a pastor who gives 
his entire time to his congregation. The preacher is usu- 
ally a farmer who preaches irregularly and makes his liv- 
ing by some other calling than the gospel. Ser\dces are 
held in each church " once't a month." The preaching is 
apt to be vociferous, intensely sectarian, but sometimes 
shrewdly pointed. As repository of doctrinal weapons the 

Bible is much on the lips of the people, and the backwoods 

-— 



THE OLD MEN OF THE MOUNTAINS 

county seat probably hears more religious " argifying," iu 
a day than the whole of New York. A revival, like a 
hanging or an election, will fill the settlement with a 
motley, high-strung crowd, generally armed with carnal 
as well as spiritual weapons; or perhaps instead of the 
revivalist there is a politician organizing the more ad- 
venturous into a mountain army with which to descend to 
intimidate a legislature or slay a governor. 

Twenty miles away, beyond the Gap, is the railroad. 
That and the river yonder are the infrequent avenues to 
the dimly-imagined larger world, the Blue Grass, the city, 
the college, and even the nation's capitol. But poverty 
and a strange inertia, half fear and half conceit — far 
more than mere physical remoteness — keep the mountain 
masses less responsive to the world's call than are the 
Slavic peasantry of eastern Europe. 

III. MOUNTAIN LIFE REFLECTED IN THE MOUN- 
TAINEER'S TRAITS 

In economic development the life of the mountains rep- 
resents an incomplete transition from the hunting and fish- 
The Stamp of ing to the agricultural stage. Partly from 
the Primitive an unconquerable love of the wild and partly 
from the pressure of necessity, forest and stream are regu- 
larly searched for their store of food — wild turkey and 
occasional deer, fish, and honey, with a relish of nuts and 
berries. Often the call of the chase is louder than the 
more prosaic call of the corn-field, and lures the moun- 
taineer to the neglect of his little farm. Even in the face 
of extreme need he remains a spasmodic and irregular 
worker, and when caught by the coal or lumber company 
his first industrial efforts are highly unsatisfactory. The 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

professional trapper is a familiar character, and his pelts 
form a habitual currency of mountain exchange. Isola- 
tion from the world means two things — first, a lack of 
industrial instruments and of resources for the easing of 
human misery, but also poverty of aspiration. Thus it 
happens that many children of the mountains look back- 
ward ; not toward American civilization, but toward the 
life of the savage. Shut out from the characteristic cur- 
rents of their age and standing on an inadequate basis of 
economic resources, they tend to be forced back upon the 
primitive, which in turn stamps itself upon their minds. 

I recall one of my earliest visits to a mountain home in 
company with a man who had come to inspect it with 
Farming with reference to a real estate loan. Examination 
Hoe, Axe discovered eighty acres of limestone debris 

and Gun ^^^^ a^ backwoodsman's cabin. The family 

consisted of middle-aged parent's and four half-grown 
children. Absolutely their only implements of labor and 
livelihood were hoes, axes, and guns. Livestock was limited 
to a few fowl. There was no draft animal and on this 
farm not even pigs. Naturally the loan had to be re- 
fused; yet this man called himself a farmer, and with 
such slender resources was vainly trying to support him- 
self from the soil. 

The distinctive social and institutional traits of the 
mountains show clear marks of their environmental origin. 
Environmental ^^^ ^^^" loyalty of the feudist, for example. 
Origin of comes by historical descent from the Highland 

Social Traits Scotch. It has survived also in the South- 
ern Appalachian because it is the natural cooperative re- 
source of poor and weak men who have been forced by a 
limited habitat to excessive intermarriage. They strive 
with instinctive ferocity to maintain the blood-bond. The 





o 



z 

< 

s 

< 

Oh 
&H 
< 

D 
O 



THE OLD MEN OF THE MOUNTAINS 

author's mountaineer ancestors preserved their clan or- 
ganization through successive migrations covering at least 
four states, the habit surviving long after the necessity 
had passed. 

On the other hand, there is an almost total absence of 
those more complex human relations, to express and con- 
Lack of Social trol which social institutions are developed. 
Institutions The breakfast-table of the " middle Ameri- 
can " may hold food products from a dozen states and 
from lands beyond both oceans. These stand for ten 
thousand human ties, each of which has some systemized 
and interrelated social process to guide it. The moun- 
taineer's table holds the scant product of his own acres, 
raised and prepared by the labor of his own hands. Hence 
there is little sense of the need of institutions beyond the 
blood-bond. The primitive barter of the country store, 
the irregular religious services of the settlement, the short 
term school, and periodic visits to the county seat are too 
far apart and too often interrupted to serve as centers for 
definite and dominating organization. Local institutions, 
therefore, do not rise to break the clan allegiance. 

In contrast with his feeble sense of the community, it 
is interesting to discover in the mountaineer a unique sense 
The Unique °^ ^^^ nation. That he is part of a larger 
Sense of the life he has two impressive reminders — the 
Nation revenue officer and the soldier. The one 

forces from the mountains tribute to a social order of 
which they are not conscious. Their manner of life does 
not depend upon a vast machinery of civilization which 
must be supported by taxes ; consequently they are not 
convinced of the nation's right to impose such burdens 
upon them. But the soldier reminds them of a relation 
of which they are most conscious. The mountains know 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

and are proud of their record in war. In the chapel of 
Berea College I saw a student body of over a thousand 
arise, almost as one man, to testify that they were children 
or grandchildren of Union soldiers of the Civil War. On 
winter evenings in the lonely cabins, the battles of the 
nation are mingled with the battles of Israel in fireside 
story, and tradition keeps the memory alive of how the 
mountain men bulwarked the nation against the Chero- 
kees or followed Jackson to New Orleans. The call of 
war has always touched their natures and stirred their 
profound instinctive loyalty to an abandon of patriotic 
response to their country's need. In '61 they followed 
the nation against their own states. These war memories, 
moreover, are the clue to mountain politics. Not from 
any sense of present national issues, but because of that 
party's association in their minds with the cause of the 
Union are they so stubbornly Republican. The nation 
exists for them as a far-off, mighty tradition, an unknown 
but extremely genuine object of allegiance; but between 
the clan and the nation there is no intermediate insti- 
tution which holds their hearts. Community life, the 
manifold relations of local citizenship, the complexity of 
civilized institutional activity — of these they are innocent. 
In the characteristic traits of mountain family life, es- 
pecially in those concerning the relations of man and 
Relations of woman, there is much that suggests the In- 
Sexes dian. The man lives an essentially outdoor 

life, using the house rather as a place to eat and sleep 
than as a home. To the women is consigned not only the 
household drudgery, but often the cultivation of the soil, 
while the man leads the woodsman's life. This is univer- 
sally the primitive division of labor. Like all similarly 
situated peoples, the mountaineer makes little outward show 

[320] 



THE OLD MEN OF THE MOUNTAINS 

of affection. Not often does he frolic with liis children, 
and even the mother holds her babe stolidly. At public 
gatherings, like church services, the sexes generally sit 
apart ; while the assumption of masculine superiority is 
clearly written in the simple yet unyielding fabric of 
mountain convention. The callow youth and even the 
schoolboy assume this pose as their natural birthright. 
The girl on the contrary accepts, as does the woman of 
the Old World, the social estimate put upon her and 
would be horrified beyond measure at the independence 
which the modern young woman claims as her due. Even 
when one comes to know the mountain girl well as a student 
he is made to feel in a hundred ways an unfathomable 
reticence which is both a defense and a barrier. Frequently 
even considerable education fails to eradicate the old in- 
stinct, and the cultured and well-equipped girl returns to 
the cabin life as the fulfilment of her nature. All this 
necessarily affects marriage relations. The most subtle 
and exquisite interpreter of the mountains, herself born 
of them, puts it thus: 

A rift is set between the sexes at babyhood that 
widens with the passing of the years, a rift that is 
never closed even by the daily interdependence of 
a poor man's partnership with his wife. Rare is a 
separation of a married couple in the mountains ; the 
bond of perfect sympathy is rarer. The difference 
is one of mental training and standpoint rather than 
the more serious one of unlike character, or marriage 
would be impossible. But difference there certainly 
is. Man and woman, although they be twenty years 
married — although in twenty years there has been 
not one hour in which one has not been immediately 
necessary to the welfare of the other — still must 

21 [ 321 ] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

needs regard each other wonderingly, with a preju- 
dice that takes the form of a mild, half-amused con- 
tempt for one another's opinions and desires. The 
pathos of the situation is none the less terrible be- 
cause unconscious. They are so silent. They know 
so pathetically little of each other's lives.-*^ 

I have seen just this trait characteristically illustrated 
in families which I have known intimately for a number 
of years. 

An apparently contradictory but equally characteris- 
tic primitive trait — and one of the most interesting — 
Social Au- ^^ ^^^® unusual respect sometimes given to old 

thority of Old women. One whose body and brain have run 
Women ^}^g harsh gauntlet of privation and labor may 

develop a lean and wiry endurance and a practical re- 
sourcefulness, which with age ripen into a unique social 
authority. The Savage woman used frequently to achieve 
a similar position by reason of her dominant share in 
primitive culture. In a social group as dependent upon 
itself as are the mountaineers, the home industries in the 
hands of women produce most of the comforts of life and 
much of its wealth. I noted that Jackson's " old woman " 
was the real head of the house. I understood why, when 
I saw her heaps of homespun blankets (enough, she ex- 
plained, for all her daughters' children; and they expect 
large famihes). She would not sell one at. any price, 
though for a sufficiently large sum my companions secured 
enough jeans for a suit. In such characters we discover 
under mountain rudeness the same capable woman of 
whom the Hebrew Proverbs sing, examples of capacity left 
in the rough, as in a statue of Rodin's. 

' Miles, "Spirit of the Mountains," pp. 69, 70. 

[322] 



THE OLD MEN OF THE MOUNTAINS 



"She riseth also while it is yet night. 
And giveth meat to her household. 
And their task to her maidens." 

"She girdeth her loins with strength, 
And maketh strong her arms. 
She perceiveth that her merchandise is profitable: 

Her lamp giveth not out by night. 
She layeth her hand to the distaff, 
And her hands hold the spindle." 

" Her husband is known in the gates 

When he sitteth among the elders of the land. 
Strength and dignity are her clothing; 

And she laugheth at the time to come. 
She openeth her mouth With wisdom. 

And the law of kindness is on her tongue. 
She looketh well to the ways of the household, 

And eateth not the bread of idleness." 

Savage or civilized, highland or lowland, she is rare; but 
where she exists " her price is above rubies." 

The religion of the mountaineer, too, feels the modify- 
ing touch of the wild. As a personal solace and an emo- 
The Touch tional energy and resource in the hour of 
of the Wild crisis, it is a genuine and momentous thing, 
upon Rehgion g^t, on the other hand, the mountain barrier 
has prevented the institutional development of the church. 
It has defeated the missionary in common with the other 
agents of civilization. Throughout the mountains there 
is a large lack of the most characteristic outward expres- 
sions of church hfe — buildings, regular services, a pro- 
fessional ministry, a systematic parish organization, mani- 
fold activities of present-day Christianity. Besides this, 
the mountains have produced a temperamental change in 
religion. The original Scotch-Irish stock went into the 
mountains Presbyterian. Their descendants are now most 
largely Baptist and Methodist. The breaking off of the 
Cumberland branch from the Presbyterian body marked 

[323] 



CHRISTIAN EECONSTEUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

a tendency toward the present characteristic type of re- 
ligious Hfe; more emotional, less staid and orderly than 
it originally was. It is with great difficulty that pupils 
in certain mission schools are induced to attend Episcopal 
services, and the admirable work of this church has had 
a difficult handicap in the distaste of the mountaineer 
for ecclesiastical form. The ill-balanced temper of the 
poorer population, reflecting their under-nourishment, 
craves religion, as it does whisky, as a stimulant. The 
" right hand of fellowship " concluding a mountain preach- 
ing may be as frankly primitive as the negro's most bois- 
terous church service. Both are reversions to the religious 
spontaneity of the earlier ages. 

Naturally, religion cannot become the reenforcement or 
guaranty of a social system which the mountaineer does 
not have or believe in. It does not tend, for example, 
greatly to back up the revenue laws. On the other hand, 
it does mightily reenforce clan loyalty. It is tribal rather 
than Christian (as indeed is much of the religion of more 
privileged people) and does not demand the exercise of 
Christian virtue toward those beyond the pale. It is in- 
termingled with a larger number of particular supersti- 
tions than is that of the average American ; for the moun- 
taineer's thinking has not been persistently schooled away 
from the early race-imagination, which peopled the world 
with mysterious powers. And because the mountain en- 
vironment is niggardly, the religious impressions drawn 
from it are fearsome rather than tender. Thus the mys- 
terious " T'other mountain " does not yield the adventurer 
" glimpses which should make him less forlorn," but rather 
an ever-present sense of impending danger. Finally, the 
brooding temper of the mountain, wrought upon by the 
potent spells of forest and stream, fiercely fed by omen 

[3241 



THE OLD MEN OF THE MOUNTAINS 

and arbitrary Scripture, shows itself in all manner of 
quaint and sometimes dark vagaries of theology and re- 
ligious imagination. The mountains are prolific of seced- 
ing sects. Marauding faiths, like Mormonism, find apt 
pupils there, and contradictions of personal character 
occur like that of old Red Fox in " The Trail of the Lone- 
some Pine," mystic and assassin, preacher and traitor! 

Enormous ilhteracy and an almost total absence of books 
and of the habit of reading, such a phenomenon as that of 

r, J. . twenty contiguous counties without a print- 

Kudimentary . -^ ° ^ 

Literary and ing-press, naturally do not tend to those 
Esthetic outward expressions of literary and esthetic 

n eres s interest to which completer civilizations are 

accustomed. Nevertheless the mountains have a tradi- 
tional literature, an elaborate and highly artistic folk-lore, 
a simple yet genuine musical tradition — coming straight 
from the ballad makers of the Scotch border, as well as 
a conventional art, by no means despicable, in their old 
weaves and dye-colors, their basketry and furniture pat- 
terns. They use many archaic words and phrases, pre- 
serving a pure and ancient English speech from which 
we have departed. There is a curiously complex mingling 
in their folk-stories of myths from over seas with those 
of the Cherokee Indians. Another genuinely artistic crea- 
tion is a rude minstrelsy — less primitive, original, and 
emotionally penetrating than the negro's, but equally 
characteristic of its people. No American group is more 
dependent on, responsive to, or critical toward, the spoken 
word, as many a Northern missionary has found to his 
sorrow. Oratory is still the chief art, and eloquence is 
vital rather than traditional. Thus the mountain fiddler, 
the looms, and dye kettle of the valley, the fireside story- 
teller, and itinerant preacher attest the life of the imagi- 

[325] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

nation ; while the mountains themselves perpetuate the 
sense of awe and stir the quick love of beauty. 

His fundamental lack of a sufficient basis of economic 
support needs to be insisted upon as the real explanation 
Less Amiable ^^ ^^^ mountaineer's less amiable traits, both 
Qualities: mental and moral. His deficiencies, Uke the 

Violence negro's, are the legitimate results of his so- 

cial station. His violence, for example, is primarily the 
fruit of under-feeding and poor housing. Ill-nourished 
nerves crave " moonshine," and in lives touched by the 
wildness of nature, deficiency in motor control expresses 
itself in sudden murder. The sensational exploiting of 
mountain communities by novel and newspaper, grievously 
misrepresents their average social condition. Yet they 
undoubtedly surpass the rest of the nation and even of 
their section in the reckless taking of human life. I am 
sure that the holiday season, in the immediate region of 
the mountain town where I recently spent six months, was 
a time of more killings than would occur in a rural county 
of the Middle West in ten years. It is probable that the 
habit of homicide was fixed in the mountains by the bush- 
whacking exploits of the Civil War — such as the fratri- 
cidal strife of " Rebel Jake " and " Union Jerry " in Fox's 
story. One who has spent his life among them tells me, 
" Before the war they used to fight with their fists." Thus 
from the great struggle in which the mountains bore so 
splendid a part, has come the custom of avenging wrongs 
with the bullet. 

Such an explanation seems not to fit such a mountaineer 
as the late Judge Hargis of Breathitt County, Kentucky, 
the reputed king of feudists and assassins. He was 
neither poor nor ignorant, and had had no little contact 
with pubhc affairs in the larger world of men. The mys- 

[326] 



THE OLD MEN OF THE MOUNTAINS 



tery is dissolved by the reflection that habit tends to live 
on after the original conditions which created it have 
disappeared. In each generation there are still enough 
mountaineers whose poverty keeps them wild to renew con- 
tinually the springs of violence. The contact of the moun- 
tain masses with the higher stimulus of the larger world 
is still extremely limited. Lacking as they do the antidotes 
of a completer civilization, they are persistently inocu- 
lated by the more violent minority, and the homicidal habit 
is propagated by social tradition. 

The mountaineer's most irritating fault is the fatalistic 
acceptance of unnecessary evils, especially apathy in the 
. ,, • presence of misery. It also goes back to the 

the Presence economic deficit. These are the marks of men 
of Misery ^Jth whom life has so long been niggardly 

that they have ceased to hope. The hardness of the moun- 
tains soon wears out the most buoyant. One of my earher 
pleasure trips into a typical region led me to Zach 
McDowell's. Zach's home was more spacious than most 
in the settlement and in it he entertained strangers for a 
price. My roommate for that night was a burly United 
States deputy marshal in search of timber thieves. Dur- 
ing the evening a merry group of neighborhood young 
people had been singing around the " parlor " organ, and 
we had both commented upon the fresh and wholesome face 
and full voice of Zach's youngest daughter. Two years 
later I came that way again, and was horrified to find 
her a sunken-faced and back-bowed mother. Her husband 
was a mountaineer above the average. They had had 
only the common adversities of their people, but she had 
broken under them. This was my first introduction to 
a group phenomenon, the early fading of the mountain 
woman. For their chief tragedies are not th e slaughter 

[327] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

of men but the sufferings of mothers and children. The 
struggle with the wild means not only racking labor, 
but frequent accidents, far from civiHzed help. It in- 
volves such risks, for example, as the jamming of the log 
raft so thrillingly described in Fox's " Little Shepherd of 
Kingdom Come." I think I never saw a school with so 
many maimed children as Black Mountain Academy. 
Childbirth without a physician; an unequal struggle for 
the poor necessities of life; a lack of the essential ele- 
ments of civilized dietary ; miserable cooking and result- 
ing dyspepsia ; the absence of dentist and oculist ; the 
lack of social stimulus to make pride preserve what it can 
of the victim's wreck — all these conspire to depress the 
mountain woman's soul and to rob growing childhood of its 
strength. The result is paralysis of the will to strive, as 
exeraphfied in one of Mrs. Miles' mountain types : 

I have never seen anything greatly resembling Mary 
Burns. A certain maid, once of the village of Naza- 
reth, may have had the same pure, modest sweetness, 
but her loveliness was of a type belonging to an- 
other race. For this Mary's hair was rich chestnut, 
and her eyes were blue — such a blue, softened by 
lashes of a length one notices on the lids of children. 
There was little light of intelligence in those eyes, 
but one felt that Mary's capacity for doglike devo- 
tion was unlimited. Excepting its innocence, the rich 
coloring of her face was its most striking feature. 
She had such a complexion as the first masters, know- 
ing the effect of Southern sun, painted without stint 
of olive and golden velvet and perfect rose. Gentle- 
ness and simplicity are characteristic of the faces of 
mountain girls. 

There are those of a genuine exquisite modesty 
who have never in their lives slept in a room apart 

[ 328 ] 



THE OLD MEN OF THE MOUNTAINS 

from the men of their household. But this was a 
child's face, with a child's ignorance behind its lovely 
mask, a child's readiness to flash into smiles at the 
least provocation, a face that ought surely to have 
met only with tenderness everywhere. 

And with all her beauty she had not even the 
mountain woman's poor best of cheap calico to wear! 
I tried to imagine her dressed in a white dimity, such 
as young girls wear in more favored regions, but 
even this seemed incongruous, although she could not 
have been more than seventeen years old. As we 
coiled and fastened her hair, I asked if she were going 
to the feet-washing, knowing how dear to the moun- 
taineer heart is the privilege of attending every form 
of religious service. 

*' I reckon not," she answered, in her sweet, hushed, 
nun-like tones. " I ain't been to church sence my 
shoes wore out, sometime last March." So she had 
trodden the freezing mud of early April with bare 
feet ! It would never have occurred to her to hide 
her poverty or her present physical distress ; she 
hardly realized that in this respect she was ill used 
by her husband. 

Superstition ascribes misery to mysterious sources and 
forbids rational remedies. To the cabin where a mis- 
The Tragedy sionary was entertained came a mountain 
of Sickness father at night-time carrying a child delirl- 

and Age Q^g ^ith fever. He wanted to borrow an old 

shoe to get water out of a healing spring! The deep 
capacity of the Scotch stock for varied, tender brooding 
degenerates into mental vacuity. When the body rests 
there is little energy left for intellectual effort. When 
the body fails an almost unconquerable apathy sits and 
watches its decline. 

[329] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

A new missionary teacher thus describes her first ex- 
perience with sickness in the mountains: 

We had heard that SalHe's mother was sick and 
consequently that SalHe could n't come back to school 
this year. So yesterday Miss B., the matron, with 
a group of schoolgirls, started to carry them some 
necessities, with a little jelly and fruit; and I went 
along. It was about three miles, and the path fol- 
lowed the Pacolet, at this point a mountain stream 
breaking into innumerable rapids and cascades. We 
found the cabin in a deep gully, surrounded by a clear- 
ing of about half an acre, thickly covered by gravel 
brought down by a recent freshet. A few stalks of 
sickly yellow com still stood, and an old white pig, who 
came to meet us, was the onl}'^ living possession of the 
family. Sallie's brother of twenty is a " farmer." In 
the winter he gathers chestnut bark for the Old Fort 
tannery. They have no other means of support. 

The cabin seemed to have suffered from freshets, 
too, for the foundation had been washed away at one 
end and it lopped down into the damp earth. In- 
side, where the floor had come in contact with the 
ground, it had rotted away, leaving jagged holes 
either side the fireplace, which furnished the only 
heat for the two rooms. In one comer lay the sick 
mother on a disorderly bed, with horrible dirty cov- 
erings and no linen at all. She was all bloated with 
dropsy, but shrilled out many blessings on our heads 
for the presents. Sallie and two other older sisters 
were pictures of helpless inefficiency. It made me wild 
to see them sit and sit and do nothing. Miss B. im- 
pressed upon them repeatedly that they must put the 
fresh linen on their mother's bed and not eat the 
oranges themselves, but I am not sure what happened 
when we got away. 

[330] 



THE OLD MEN OF THE MOUNTAINS 

When the body dies, isolation compels its consignment 
to the ground with the slightest delay, in the expectation 
that in six months or a year a funeral service will be held 
at the church-house. This custom of deferred burial rites 
is frequent even at the county seats and railroad towns. 
Thus a habit born of mountain necessity survives in popu- 
lations now far beyond its compulsion. Similarly the 
general mental cast of the region is touched by the traits 
of the most backward. The constitutional nervelessness 
and apathy of the minority deeply influences the energies 
of the whole group. 

On the other hand, where the struggle with nature has 
not too deeply depressed the body and mind, all of the 
Mountain splendid, homely virtues of the pioneer sur- 

Virtues vive, and often take on rare attractiveness 

in the sons and daughters of the mountains. Their de- 
layed development conserves much that this age lacks of 
unspoiled elemental manhood and simplicity of spirit — 
both profoundly urgent moral needs of to-day. Beneath 
a reckless individualism and ignorant conceit one discerns 
resources of sturdy independence. The mountaineer faces 
his hard circumstances with a heart at once undaunted 
and resigned. A saving sense of humor breaks every fall 
and turns defeat into more than half a victory. Having 
shrewdly fathomed human nature as it exists in his nar- 
row range, he finds his judgments surprisingly just and 
accurate when opportunity comes to apply them to the 
larger world. He undertakes unwonted responsibility with 
a certain honorable largeness and perspective ; thus show- 
ing that wisdom is born of insight rather than of the 
mere multiplication of experiences. Lincoln was such a 
man and had such wisdom. " He that is faithful in that 
which is least is faithful also in much." Training in the 

[331] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

school of adversity often develops in the mountaineer a 
practical capacity for making small resources count which 
spells marvelous success when once the instruments of 
modern life are put in his hands. Recently I watched a 
mountain student's first inspection of the newly installed 
hot-air furnace in a mission school dormitory. The moun- 
taineer, like the Indian, studiously refrains from confessing 
surprise at the unaccustomed ; but this boy's curiosity 
and interest got the better of him. Soon he was freely 
speculating on the operation and success of the innova- 
tion ; yet not for a moment did he admit to the world or 
to himself that he was not its potential master. He seemed 
to me typical of the mountaineer facing modem civiliza- 
tion. The mood of the forward-looking among them is 
the mood of conquest. Put it to the test by furnishing it 
an opportunity and it will justify itself as it has done ten 
thousand times. 

The conflicting traits of their people, evil and good, I 
have watched in successive generations of students, each 

^ J J adding conclusiveness to the iudement that 

Good and *= . P 

Evil Traits the problem of the mountain is twofold ; 

of Mountain partly that of a suppressed population pos- 
" ^° ^ sessing but not utilizing the normal capaci- 

ties of Americans, and partly that of a remnant, sifted 
out in the westward march of civilization as deficient in 
energy and progressiveness. Education simply discovers 
these differences. We record this solemnly, as if the case 
of the mountaineer was unique. All peoples have these 
two classes and all education simply systemizes the proc- 
esses which sift man.-^ Thus it frequently appears that 
the mountain boy has too much inborn inertia to respond 

* Thorndike, Educational Psychology, "The Influence of Selection," 
ch. ix. 

[ 332 ] 




The Mountain Weaver 








The Cotton-Mill 



THE OLD MEN OF THE MOUNTAINS 

to the steady discipline of study. His nature is not 
sufficiently elastic to adjust itself to school conditions. 
Such a one was " Big Scotch," who strayed from the hills, 
and was laid hold of and made " center " on a college foot- 
ball team. The gridiron gave ample scope for the primi- 
tive in him, and he quickly became an academic hero ; but 
neither flattery nor abuse could keep him at his books, 
and only strenuous appeal to clan loyalty under the guise 
of college spirit held him through the season. At night, 
for utter homesickness, the big fellow would cry like a 
child; and when football was over for the year the call 
of the wild became irresistible. Back went " Big Scotch " 
to the cabin. Another year the college, in desperate need 
of him, tried by all manner of persuasion, including ample 
financial inducements, to dig him from his hills; but in 
vain. He remained a mountaineer, not of necessity, but 
through natural affinity for the life of the past. 

On the other hand, I count it among my chief com- 
pensations to have known somewhat intimately a number 
, , . , of mountain students in an institution of 

Mountains by higher learning. I have watched and in 
their Possi- some measure shared in their transformation, 
bihties They were raw material but most capable 

stuff. Gaunt and unawakened boys grew into alert, self- 
reliant, well-equipped modem men, invariably with a strong 
grain of idealism in their make-up, and able to stand the 
test before the kings of commerce and industry. There 
is only one finer thing than this, namely, that wonderful 
expansion of the mountain girl's nature under the new 
incentives of culture. Her earnest and capable womanhood 
is sure to be a center of wholesome home life as she goes 
back to her mountain community — generally first as a 
teacher in her own country school. Perhaps this back- 

[ 333 1 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

ground of experience helps me when I sit in some little 
cabin on the Upper Cumberland and see the parent in- 
carnations of mountain simphcity. An old grandmother 
faces me. She sits tilted back against the wall, her rough- 
shod feet on the rungs of the hickory chair, and her knees 
mannishly apart. Her pipe is between her teeth and 
periodically she spits across the room into the fire; but 
her face reminds me of the Cumaean Sibyl, and an awe sur- 
rounds her, as if she were the Prophetess Deborah under 
the palm-tree in the hill-country of Ephraim. 

With an unexplored wealth of such material to work 
upon, the assimilation of mountain life to the best Ameri- 
The Moun- can standard waits but two things — first, 
tain's Needs: the development of the natural resources of 

Development -^g region by the larger instruments of civili- 

01 Kesources; . . , , . 

Guidance of zation, capital, machmery, transportation ; 

Ideals and second, the extension of educational in- 

stitutions to furnish both technical skill and ideal guid- 
ance. These are both coming with almost alarming rapid- 
ity. Of men to respond there will be no lack. They are 
there waiting, offering a primitive American character, 
unspoiled and largely unused, plastic yet wholesomely re- 
sistant, to the touch of our full-fledged destinies as men 
of this crowning age. 



334] 



XI. THE PASSING OF THE 
MOUNTAINEER 

PRESIDING over the future of the mountains are 
two ominous characters, the millionaire and the 
missionary. The passing of their characteristic 
Hfe is predestined on the one hand by two facts — the 
very heart of its region holds the largest unworked coal 
fields in the United States, while its superb scenery and 
equable climate, both summer and winter, make it a na- 
tional playground. On the other hand, neither the state 
nor the Christian conscience can longer endure the waste 
of mountain manhood for lack of opportunity. 

There is thus a new chapter in the history of the 
Southern Appalachians. 

I. THE EXPLOITATION OF THE MOUNTAINS BY 
INDUSTRY 

The mountaineer is not so much to-day the man who 

has been left alone as he is the man whom we will not 

rri, T.T leave alone. For the wealth of mineral and 

1 he Man . i • i t 

Whom We of timber which these mountains hold, but 

will not Leave especially for the wealth of labor power, 
°^^ industry is fast penetrating their most in- 

accessible nooks and comers. The industrial exploitation 
of the mountains is far advanced, and with it the passing 
of the mountaineer. We call this progress, forgetting 

[335] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

that to this belated man it brings a strain of body, mind, 
and heart which the best of us can scarcely bear, and for 
which he is one hundred and fifty years unprepared. 

Consider first the effect of the cotton industry on the 
men, or rather on the women and children of the 
The Cotton mountains. The chief Southern seats of this 
Industry industry are the Carolinas. If you will study 

the location of the hundreds of mills which dot the up- 
lands of these states, you will find that they are parallel 
to and frequently in sight of the mountains. Twenty 
years ago there was scarcely one of them ; now this has 
become one of the great manufacturing centers of the 
nation. Whence came the men and women who labor 
in these mills.? Most largely, naturally, from the up- 
land farms of the immediate vicinity, but largely, and 
increasingly in recent years, from the fastnesses of 
the mountains. An intelligent mill owner has told me 
that the next census will show many mountain counties 
practically depopulated to swell the ranks of cotton-mill 
operatives. 

The unlovely life of the Southern cotton-mill town has 
been often exploited. It is a harsh measure of the pov- 
erty of the mountains, but in fact the mill town may con- 
stitute a decided advance in the conditions of life. First 
there is better housing, a steady cash wage, and a more 
varied diet of inexpensive food. The Scotchman redis- 
covers oatmeal, exchanges his com bread for wheat, and 
makes the acquaintance of rice. There is a steady up- 
ward pressure of institutional and civic life. Schools are 
few and poor compared with those of more favored sec- 
tions, and the miU child too often does not go ; yet the 
opportunity is there, which public opinion, through child 
labor laws and educational improvement, is steadily ex- 

[336] 



THE PASSING OF THE MOUNTAINEER 

tending. The imagination finds new food in the activi- 
ties and impulses of town and city. Those who have ears 
to hear, hear. 

In this crisis of transition, however, the economic and 
moral unpreparedness and even essential incapacity of 
part of the mountain population is also revealed. To 
them a cash wage means excess and drunkenness. They 
gorge themselves with newly discovered food. From being 
fixed by narrow isolation, they go to the other extreme 
and become industrial nomads. Such wandering families 
— for all ages and both sexes work — pass by hundreds 
from mill town to mill town, their scant possessions 
dragged about in sacks, or carried in their arms. The 
Southern mills have generally been short-handed in recent 
years, so that even the inefficient have been sure of a job. 
With mountain shrewdness, the father sets employer to 
bidding against employer for the labor of his wife and 
six, eight, or ten children — often no small labor force. 
To close a good bargain he will often throw in the labor 
of a child or two under the legal age. He himself does 
not work but is the walking delegate of his domestic 
trade-union. Naturally the down-draught of the city 
soon catches families of this type. They sink finally into 
a peculiarly inert and hopeless class of criminals and 
paupers. Thus the sifting proceeds. 

But not only is the mill drawing the mountaineer out 
of his mountains ; it is itself going up into the moun- 
The Going of ^^'^^^ to find him. I have recently traveled 
the Mill to three branch lines which lead from the main 

the Mountain jj^e of a Southern railroad into the moun- 
tains, and have been amazed at the degree to which in- 
dustry has followed the mountaineer into his own home. 
Here is a mill, fifty miles from a cotton field and eight 

22 [ 337 ] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

miles from the end of a branch railroad. The cotton is 
shipped by rail and hauled by wagon over a rough moun- 
tain road; is manufactured, and the product hauled out 
again. What makes it possible thus to disregard all con- 
veniences of transportation.'' First, the presence of good 
water-power, but chiefly the accessibility of cheap labor. 
Here is a population unused to industry ; intensely in- 
dividualistic ; innocent of all knowledge of labor organ- 
ization ; which has handled very little cash, and is con- 
sequently willing to sell itself for an incredibly small sum 
in weekly wages. Adults receive perhaps $4 and children 
$2 per week. Their parents willingly swear that children 
are twelve, when they are only nine or ten, and " Every- 
body works but father " is not poetry here, but sober 
prose. There are coming to be many such mills among 
the mountains, as well as other industries. In the midst 
of the most picturesque stretch of mountain scenery in 
North Carolina the train suddenly stops over against a 
million dollar tannery, which is robbing the whole " land 
of the sky " of one of its most splendid trees, the chest- 
nut-oak, that the nation may wear tan shoes. 

Thus the old problems of the belated and ignorant 
highlander mingle with the new problems of child labor 
,p, p , and of modern industry in general. But now, 

a Century while we have gradually worked up to this 

Unprepared industrial age through a century and a half, 
or n ustry ^.j^j^ man, our belated ancestor, our " con- 
temporary grandfather," is hurled into the very midst of 
its strange perplexity and struggle without preparation. 
Take the single aspect of sanitation. I know a mill vil- 
lage in as beautiful a valley as the mountains possess. 
The employer has honestly tried to create wholesome 
industrial conditions, yet as time has passed the sources 

[338] 



THE PASSING OF THE MOUNTAINEER 

of water-supply have been contaminated by drainage until 
the whole smiling valley is sodden with hidden corruption, 
and women and children drop and die with typhoid as regu- 
larly as months come and go. The only possible remedy 
is a thorough job of sanitary engineering, so expensive 
that the resources of the mill corporation could not pos- 
sibly justify it. Against this unwonted peril of sewage 
the mountaineer is helpless. His cabin has been cold, but 
well ventilated above, below, and on all four sides. Now 
he works in a steam-heated mill, and all the perils 
of the wilderness, the tomahawk of the savage, and the 
harsh struggle of the pioneer with the niggardly moun- 
tains, brought no such danger to life as is involved in 
bad air. 

Farther west, in Tennessee and Kentucky, there are 
few cotton-mills, but industry has searched out the nooks 
Coal and and comers of the mountains for their coal 

Lumber and timber, and there also the old mountain 

life is fast passing. We went a three days' horseback ride 
from the railroad over the Black Mountain ; down into 
the valley of Yoakum Creek; down that creek to its 
junction with Poor Fork of the Cumberland; up the fork; 
up Looney Creek, until we came at nightfall to the cabin 
of Old Man Jackson on the border of Letcher County. 
Old Man Jackson is a sort of nabob of the mountains, 
where the valley widens a little and furnishes the possi- 
bility of a bottom farm. He has a four-room cabin with 
three great stone chimneys, and there with his strong sons 
and daughters he dwells in self-sufficiency. His farm and 
pasture furnish food ; his wool, clothing. The loom stands 
on the back porch, and the family, both men and women, 
are chiefly clad in homespun. We slept under many 
thicknesses of homespun blankets, in a room where rings 

[339] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

of pumpkins were drying on spikes stuck between the 
stones of the great fireplace. The household is literally 
independent of 

" The butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker," 

for the only lights are the dipped candles and the flare 
of the open fire. If the mountains had suddenly risen and 
fenced the valley on either side, its life might have gone 
on indefinitely without ever missing the world, and I 
thought that of this spot at least I would be safe for 
fifty years in telling the old story of the mountaineer and 
his isolation. Yet, within three months, I read in a chance 
newspaper something like this : " The Blank & Blank Com- 
pany of Indiana will spend a million dollars in Letcher 
County in the coming year. It will build thirty miles of 
railroad and open nineteen coke ovens." And why.'' Be- 
cause the Lord sent a freshet which ran under Old Man 
Jackson's kitchen and laid bare a bed of coal. In the 
morning he could get up with his pick and get his fuel 
from underneath his house; and men heard about it. 
Therefore, where never in all the world had the shadow of 
one human habitation fallen upon another, a narrow valley 
will be crammed with crowded miners' huts. Those pure 
mountain streams will be fouled with the refuse of industry. 
Perchance a hundred negroes of the worst type — the 
irresponsible, unskilled labor class — will be thrust into 
the midst of a quiet mountain county which has scarcely 
seen a black face, and the worst possibilities of the race 
problem will be presented ; and Old Man Jackson's sons, 
who have never been in bondage to any man, now for more 
money, indeed, than they have ever seen in their lives, will 
toil under ground. 

The following press despatch indicates the Industrial 

[3401 



THE PASSING OF THE MOUNTAINEER 

and financial magnitude of this present partitioning of 
the mountains by the powers that be: 

Bristol, Virginia, March 10, 1908. George L. 
Carter, President of the South & Western Rail- 
The Partition- ^oad, has just closed a deal for an im- 
ing of the mense tract of coal and timber property 

Mountains in eastern Kentucky, including ninety- 

by Financial two per cent of the total acreage of 

County and extending into 

other counties. The property was purchased in his 
own right, and some thirty thousand acres in fee 
simple. The consideration is not known. This pur- 
chase is a private investment of Mr. Carter, as the 
property will not be touched by the South and West- 
em, It is believed that his ultimate object is to build 
another railroad through Kentucky. 

The Martz Iron and Timber Corporation, of Ken- 
tucky, of which Mr. Carter is said to be the head, has 
just sold to J. H. Wallis & Co., Philadelphia Bankers, 
a tract of land in middle Tennessee and another in 
eastern Kentucky at $44,000. Attorney T. Irving 
Hart of Johnson City, in the employ of Mr. Carter, 
has just returned from Philadelphia, in connection 
with the deal. 

South <§• Western Meeting 

The annual meeting of the stockholders of the 
South & Western Railroad of Tennessee, will be held 
in the office of President Carter, at Johnson City, 
March 22, and will be attended by Thomas F. Ryan 
of New York, and probably Norman B. Ream of 
Chicago, Thomas Jefferson Coolidge of Boston, and 
other multi-millionaires interested in the project. 

The company now has ample funds to complete 
the road, and it is believed that it will be ready for 

[ 341 1 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

operation early next year. It is now about seventy 
per cent completed, and will require in the neighbor- 
hood of $10,000,000 before completed. The Clinch- 
field Coal Corporation, which is allied with the Ryan 
and Carter interests and owns 300,000 acres of coal 
land in southwest Virginia, is actively preparing to 
open the mines next year, and the $2,500,000 appro- 
priated last year for this purpose is being expended. 
This is a $30,000,000 corporation, and is headed by 
George L. Carter, and for the development of which 
property the South & Western is being chiefly built.^ 

What will happen to the thousand families to whom this 
enormous project must mean sudden dislocation and a com- 
plete break with their whole scheme of life.'^ The more 
fortunate will receive a few hundred dollars for their land 
or mineral rights. Utterly unaccustomed to a cash econ- 
omy, they will not know how to use their sudden wealth, 
and will squander their lifetime's chance. It is exactly 
parallel to the case of the negro who buys a top buggy 
with the cotton surplus money he should pay on a farm. 
An agent, who has bought up such rights for years, tells 
me that rarely is the mountaineer wise enough to re- 
establish himself with the proceeds of his sale. Cut from 
his moorings he drifts ; out of sight of his landmarks 
he is lost. There is no sadder human fate than these 
banishments decreed by progress. 

This is the crisis of the mountaineer, the sudden pres- 
ence of that sifting process in which the negro is caught 
The Human ^" ^^^ ^'^^J- I^ ^^^ means progress for those 
Cost of who can enter its gates of opportunity ; the 

Progress chance of an awakened mind, of a broader 

outlook ; of wealth, with all its possibilities. But, oh, the 

> Knoxville Sentinel, March 10, 1908. 
[342] 



THE PASSING OF THE MOUNTAINEER 

tragedy of it for those not able to meet this sudden stress, 
and its unwonted temptations ; who cannot stand before 
the tremendous physical and mental and moral strain of 
what we call civilization ! What special need, then, that 
the mountaineer shall have just now the steadying, guid- 
ing influence of the Christian school and the enlightened 
Christian church! 

I have stood at twilight in a wonderful valley in Ten- 
nessee, where iron and coal he side by side in the moun- 
The Parable tains and are rolled down, by their own 
of the Blast- weight, straight to the blast-furnace below. I 
Furnace have watched the flare of the furnace fires 

against the deepening gloom of the mountainside; I have 
seen the molten iron run like fiery serpents down its path 
of sand, and heard the fierce hissing as the dross, shattered 
by streams of water, falls into the waste-pit ; and it has 
all seemed to me a terrible parable. For there are men in 
these mountains as well as minerals, and industry digs 
them out, to separate them, and to transform those who 
are fit unto better things. But industry does not care for 
the poor, the weak, the handicapped. God does ; and in 
his behalf the missionary must stand to supplement, some- 
times to neutralize, the harshly beneficent work of the 
milhonaire. 

II. THE EXPLOITATION OF THE MOUNTAINS BY 

LEISURE 

The tender mercies of the millionaire at play, even when 
The Passins? touched with much sentimental philanthropy, 
"Spirit of the are no less cruel than those of industry. Mrs. 
Mountains" jVliles puts the case so justly, and with such 
fine feehng, that I quote at length: 

[343] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

One day a hotel is built, a summer settlement 
begun, in some fastness of the mountains hitherto 
secluded from the outer world. The pure air, the 
mineral waters, are advertised abroad, and the sum- 
mer people begin to come in. Good roads are 
built in place of the old creek beds and trails, and 
rubber-tired carriages whirl past the plodding oxen 
and mule teams. Handsome cottages are erected in 
contrast to the cabins, and sunbonnets turn aside in 
wonder at bright creations of roses and chiffon. The 
mountain people come in groups to look on, some from 
homes so deep in the woods that the children take 
fright at the approach of even a home-made " tar- 
grinder " wagon. They are easily bewildered, of 
course, and cannot at once respond to the need of a 
new standard of values. Perhaps instead of a hotel 
it is a factory or a mill of some kind that presents the 
thin edge of the wedge, but the results are as certain 
to follow. 

When the cottages are occupied the trouble be- 
gins. The hotel may bring its own servants ; but 
for the summer people there are washing and sewing 
to be done by the women, and work in the gardens 
and stables by the men of the place. Later, they are 
hired as house servants, and as caretakers during the 
winter season, when the houses must stand empty. 
All this is hardly to be avoided, perhaps, but a host 
of evils follow. Here is an easy way of making money, 
and the old pursuits are abandoned. Men neglect 
their farms and the fashioning of sturdy home-made 
implements and utensils. It is easier, far, to buy 
city tools with city money. Their teams are con- 
stantly in demand for hauling, moving households up 
in the spring and down in the fall. They have never 
worked so hard before, nor been so well paid. The 
strenuous life has laid hold of them. It seems for a 

[344] 



THE PASSING OF THE MOUNTAINEER 

time that better days have dawned for the half starved 
and the ignorant among us. 

Is it any wonder that false ambitions creep in? 
The lady of the hotel or cottage, when she packs her 
trunks to go home, leaves sundry trinkets out for the 
mountain girl who has served her — half-worn cloth- 
ing such as the poor child has never seen before, 
trimmed hats, books and magazines, if she can read. 
The recipient plans for a similar donation next year. 
She does not willingly return to sunbonnet and home- 
spun. Her old mother cares little for the new clothes, 
but sees at once how much easier it is to buy blan- 
kets than to spin and weave. So the loom and wheel 
are consigned to the barn loft, where they fall to 
pieces with dry-rot, and the woman forgets her cover- 
let patterns. The hand of the worker in wood and 
metal loses its cunning. The growing lads scarcely 
learn to shoe a horse ; they are all too busy working 
for the city people. 

The value of money, the false importance of riches, 
is evident to their minds before the need of education. 
They become avaricious, they who were wont to share 
their last chew of tobacco, and put the children to 
earning, by picking berries or what not, instead of 
sending them to school. For by this time the city 
people have helped to build a schoolhouse in the dis- 
trict. The old-time hospitality is crowded out of 
existence, and under the influence of women, who 
imagine that a man who does not know when to take 
off his hat cannot possibly be courteous, the fine old 
manners disappear. The old music is supplanted by 
cheap Sunday-school song-books, that contain shaped 
notes and directions so clear that the wayfaring man 
who has learned to sing on the do-re-mi-fa-sol basis, 
though he knows not one key from another, need not 
err therein. The homespuns, with their delightful 

[345] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

dull colors of root and bark, are ousted by aniline- 
dyed calicoes which do not wear more than a season. 
The beauty of simple smoke-browned interiors is 
blotted out with newspapers pasted, coat upon coat, 
on the walls for additional warmth, since paper is 
easier come by than substantial chinking. Druggist 
barrel-house liquor takes the place of the clear, fiery 
product of the still, making the evil of drunkenness 
ten times worse. The old dances are given over to 
rowdies. A new standard of morals is set up amid 
the confusion. Even the old religion is passing, 
laughed away by empty-headed ones who never could 
understand a thing so sacred. This people who have 
no servant class are constantly made to feel them- 
selves inferior to the idle newcomers, and so fall into 
servility. The old dignity has slipped from them be- 
fore they are aware.^ 

I know a mountain community in which rich Charles- 
tonians have their own church. They bring their pastor 
D b" In- ^"^ ^^^ summer and hold services for the 
fluence of the transient population. Then they lock the 
Tourist church and go away, leaving the natives to 

themselves. The lonely missionary teacher, shut in with 
them by impassable winter roads, does not find the influence 
left by the careless flitters altogether sweet. Tlie native 
lads, who have made easy money driving smart rigs full of 
tourists to admire the mountain scenery, prefer to loaf 
rather than to go to school until next summer. Their 
wholesome standards of life have been overthrown. They 
see only the lighter side of more privileged civilization, 
pick up its vices and seldom understand its Titanic in- 
dustry and profounder meaning. Thus the mountaineer 

1 Miles, " The Spirit of the Mountains," pp. 190-194. 
[346] 



THE PASSING OF THE MOUNTAINEER 

falls into the gap between the old and the new. The spirit 

of the mountains is broken before the spirit of the modern 

world captures him in its imperious but courageous grip. 

The saddest thing about the millionaire's ministry to 

the mountains, whether of work or of play, is that it is so 

T 1 4 1 largely exploitation rather than permanent 

Industry and & J r ... 

Leisure both occupancy. Just now the nation is waking 
Exploit rather up to the bitter fact that much of its in- 
ccupy (Justrial progress has been a squandering of 
natural resources ; and waste has been nowhere more ram- 
pant than in the South. I shall never forget the passion- 
ate appeal of one of the educational evangelists of Ten- 
nessee who argued that his state, however burdened with 
debt, must educate its mountain people in order to end its 
exploitation by alien capital; an exploitation which is not 
only sapping it of present profits but will be sure to leave 
its land stripped of original wealth. The mountains are 
full of decaying coal towns whose last state is infinitely 
worse than the first. John Fox's latest story vividly de- 
scribes the collapse of land and mining schemes and their 
effect upon an Appalachian county seat. 

The story of the lumber industry as managed by Ameri- 
can commercial wisdom is one of continuous economic 
atrocities. When the denuded mountainsides hurl down 
their torrents upon the lowlands, overwhelming the Caro- 
linas, and inundating Augusta, the nation begins to hear 
and pity the lowlands. These have tongues, a press, promi- 

T5 • u- xu nent representatives in Congress, which even 
Ravishing the ^ <. 

Mountains of Speaker Cannon cannot utterly' and forever 
Beauty as well ignore ; hence agitation for an Appalachian 
^ ^ forest reserve. But the first tragedy of the 

fallen forest is that of the mountains themselves, which 
are voiceless. The thin soil of their slopes and shoulders 

[347 1 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

is swept away ; stones bury the bottom farms, while sadder 
still, the people are robbed of their long heritage of the 
beauty of the hills — their one priceless possession. Or, 
with the tourist, comes the freebooter florist, whose per- 
nicious activity is exterminating some of the most charm- 
ing winter greenery of the Carolinas to deck Northern 
feast or fast. Must we bury our dead under branches 
filched from our Appalachian brother, leaving his body to 
lie amid crumbling stumps and his dust to be washed from 
his naked hillside.'* 

With the passing whim of fashion, winter resorts come 
and go. The wreckage of a million dollar hotel near 
Cumberland Gap, bought for a song, now houses a moun- 
tain school. Two other schools to my knowledge have ac- 
quired buildings under similar conditions. The toilsome 
climb up Walden Ridge to Grand View Institute recently 
made every brick for a new dormitory cost double by the 
time it arrived. A railroad used to run up there, but was 
abandoned with the waning popularity of the region as a 
health center. 

Tliese ebbing waves of industry and leisure cause some 
of the chief embarrassments of missionary policy. Fre- 
A Tragical quently what seemed a dozen years back a 

Recessional promising and strategic center of mountain 
hfe, turns out to be a decaying community, disillusioned, 
disheartened, hopeful neither for church nor school. Its 
more energetic people, the natural leaders, abandon it. 
The foreign blood and capital which tried to develop it 
are withdrawn. Sometimes they were genuine home-seekers 
trying to naturalize the fruit industry or even general 
agriculture in the milder climate of the mountains. Some- 
how they do not stay. Decaying homes and deserted 
schoolhouses are their tragical recessional. 

[3481 



THE PASSING OF THE MOUNTAINEER 

Now all this raises the question of the residual strength 
of the hills to hold back permanently the fuller tides of 
The Residual civilization. The New York Central Rail- 
Strength of way following up the water level of the Hud- 
the Hills gQjj Iq iYj^q Mohawk gateway can travel sev- 

eral extra miles to Buffalo and still have immense perma- 
nent advantage over its nearest competitor, which must Uft 
its trains over the comparatively slight Alleghany barrier. 
All the resources of the modem world cannot neutralize 
an additional thousand feet of elevation. How much less 
will they quickly obliterate the height and breadth of the 
Southern Appalachians ! Thus Brigham writes : 

A few tons of coal are now enough to overcome 
the Appalachian barrier, and it is from this point of 
view, apparently, that a recent writer treats the Ap- 
palachians lightly, as if they were no barrier. They 
do not now stop or turn aside the movements of men 
and commodities, but they still interpose a peculiar 
belt of climate, soil, field, and forest between the At- 
lantic and the Mississippi, and their influence in early 
days was enormous. Geographic influences are no 
less real because they blend with other types of con- 
trol in the maturity of society.^ 

So much is clear: the old man of the mountains is 
doomed. Enough of civilization, especially of its e\als, is 
sure to come to break his dreams and wreck his peace, while 
the mountain barrier, as a stubborn physical fact, remains 
to make the bringing of the better opportunities of life 
a slow and difficult task for the statesman and pliilan- 
thropist. 

• Brigham, " Geographic Influences in American History," p. 318. 



349] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 



III. THE UPLIFT OF THE MOUNTAINS BY 
EDUCATION 

This is one of the two great national missionary prob- 
lems geographically located in the South, toward the solv- 
ing of which the organized Christian philanthropy of the 
North has reached out a brotherly hand. Shall these vast 
and impending changes make for human welfare and the 
nation's moral strength? Because of the crisis of the 
exploitation by industry and by leisure — because both of 
these disturbing forces are exploitations and consequently 
careless as to their human fruits — and because the moun- 
tains remain, even when exploited, a molding and re- 
straining power, the work of the missionary is of central 
importance. May there be a transformation as well as an 
exploitation, from old into new men of the mountains — 
men keeping all pristine virtues yet assimilating them to 
the better spirit of the age.'' 

Relatively speaking, as a problem of an unassimilated 

human mass, this problem is many-fold smaller than the 

Relative Maw- other one. There are at least ten, or prob- 

nitude of ably twenty times as many un-Americanized 

ou ern ro - jjga.j.ogg jj^ ^}^g South as there are mountain- 
lems: JNegro '^ 

vs. Moun- eers. The negro's present deficiency, too, 

taineer is deeper seated and his prospects more dubi- 

ous than theirs. From the standpoint of the nation, also, 
the negro problem is the more dangerous and pressing. 
It confessedly contains social dynamite, while the forgot- 
ten highlander might rot amid his stumps without dis- 
turbing the preoccupation of the greater and busier world. 
Thus, just because it is less directly emphasized in popu- 
lar agitation, or backed by self-interest, the regeneration 

[350] 




Black Mountain Acapesiy, Evauts, Ky, 




Elementary Grades, Black Mountain AcADEiMY 



THE PASSING OF THE MOUNTAINEER 

of the mountains makes a profound and unalloyed appeal 
to the Christian conscience. 

The missionary agencies which seek to do this work fol- 
low policies and use methods generally similar to those 
illustrated in activities for the negro. As in his case, 
their work will be illustrated by the typical but uniquely 
unsectarian institutions of the American Missionary 
Association. 

Its educational activities are frankly cooperative with 

and supplemental to the public school systems of the Ap- 

f^ .. palachian states. The will to educate the 

Cooperation ^ 

of Missionary mountaineer is everywhere present, as the 
Agencies with will to educate the negro is not. In the 
former case, therefore, it is merely a ques- 
tion of the state's ability, and the awakening of the moun- 
tain districts to add local responsibility to the state's re- 
sources. Wise and heroically conducted campaigns to 
this end are being persistently carried on throughout the 
South, and preeminently in the mountain states, to which, 
through the General Educational Board and the Peabody 
Fund, Northern philanthropy has largely contributed. 
The building up of state school systems, on the one hand, 
has largely distracted interest and gifts from the more 
modest work of the missionary institutions ; on the other, 
it has progressively relieved them of burden and will in- 
creasingly do so. The South is not yet able to educate 
its children without help ; but as it becomes able it will 
develop white schools first. Thus for philanthropy the 
mountains are not merely a lesser problem than that of 
the negro, but a more rapidly diminishing one. Where 
mountain mission schools exist, cooperation with the state 
is close. At present all of the American Missionary Asso- 
ciation's mountain institutions, save one, receive public 

[351] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

funds. These pay but a small proportion of the expenses 
of maintenance and contribute nothing to the support of 
higher grades of education ; but they secure the prestige 
— and sometimes the educational handicap — of state 
supervision, and express the cooperative spirit. In the 
crusade for better public schools, missionary principals 
have been the educational leaders of their regions. Some 
have served as county superintendents of education. The 
preparation of teachers has been a chief element of all 
missionary endeavor. Pleasant Hill Academy, Tennessee, 
has sometimes put fifty public school-teachers into the 
field in a single year. 

With this institution we may begin our review of typical 
mountain institutions of the American Missionary Asso- 
ciation, ranging from elementary schools to colleges and 
theological seminaries. 

Pleasant Hill Academy is a secondary school of the 
older type. Its field, Cumberland County, is notable upon 
Typical Mis- *^^ census maps for the poverty of popu- 
sionary Insti- lation and of agricultural production. Its 
tutions of three hundred pupils come from a surround- 

Gn^e-^Pleas- ^^S region, one of the most backward in the 
ant Hill United States. Some sixty of these pupils 

Academy a,re in the two years' normal course following 

the elementary school. There are a dozen teachers, includ- 
ing special instructors in music and girls' industries. While 
boys' industries are not at present systematically taught, 
the school has its own sawmill, and has on occasion burned 
its own brick, out of which it has built two three-story 
dormitories. This year a girls' industrial building was 
erected, chiefly by student labor. Pleasant Hill has the 
reputation of making a dollar go further than it does 
anywhere else. 

[352] 



THE PASSING OF THE MOUNTAINEER 

Around the school has grown up a modest and whole- 
some community life. There are half-a-dozen stores and 
shops and a cluster of homes, much superior to those in 
the neighboring settlements. Dignified and intelligent re- 
ligious services draw splendid audiences. The attendance 
at a mid-week prayer-meeting would be a surprise and a 
gratification in a metropolitan church. The school brings 
also a superior grade of lecturers and entertainers. Prob- 
ably no mountain institution has so completely become 
naturalized in the heart of its region. There will prob- 
ably some day be a high school at the county seat, four- 
teen miles distant, but the Academy is founded in the 
affections of the people. It has identified itself with their 
interests. Even though the region should develop ade- 
quate public schools it will be needed, because of its sen- 
timental value. Dozens of New England academies are 
not educationally necessary, but antedating the public 
school systems, they have historic sanction. Pleasant Hill 
Academy has a similar guaranty of permanence. 

Grand View Normal Institute, a school of about the 
same size, situated in an adjoining county, shows a moun- 
Grand View tain institution in process of change from the 
Institute old missionary type into one adapting itself 

better to serve the expanding needs and economic prob- 
lems of the mountains. Its four years' secondary course 
prepares for the University of Tennessee, but its particu- 
lar ideal is to become an agricultural high school. A 
hundred-acre farm, including considerable tillable land, 
has recently been added to its domain, and a graduate of 
a Northern agricultural college has begun the task of 
appl3dng the scientific principles of farming to mountain 
rural conditions. The raising of general crops will not 
be largely attempted, but gardening, horticulture, for- 

23 [ 353 1 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

estry, and stock-raising are all possible on the Cumber- 
land Plateau. The science course in the high school has 
been reconstructed in correlation with practical farming 
operations. Laboratories and workrooms have been pro- 
vided for instruction in domestic science and household 
management. A shop for the teaching of farm mechanics 
has been erected and awaits equipment. Grand View is 
about equally distant from six county seats, and the center 
of an area which in no human possibility will have ade- 
quate common school facilities for generations. Its per- 
manence will depend upon a continuing need, but also 
essentially upon its adaptation to practical local interests. 
Of graded elementary schools, with five or six teachers 
and from one to two hundred pupils, Joppa Institute, 
p,, in Cullman County, Alabama, is an inter- 

Schools; esting illustration. The settlement itself 

Joppa In- consists of some thirty cabins, with two or 

^ ' " ^ three stores, a blacksmith shop, and two 

church-houses. By far the largest dwelling is our eight- 
room teachers' home. A little distance from it stands a 
well-built and commodious schoolhouse. To-day the sixth 
grade happens to be reading essays on pioneer life. The 
wise Bostonian, who makes the school-books, thinks it 
important that the children of the generation understand 
the life of their great-great-grandparents of Massachu- 
setts Bay, wliich he describes in great detail — the clear- 
ing of the forest, the building of the log-cabin, the little 
patch of farm amidst the stumps, the hunt for venison and 
wild turkeys, and the solemn procession of Puritans to 
the meeting-house, each man with a gun in his hand. The 
children faithfully reproduce this valuable information as 
an exercise in English, while as a matter of fact every 
one of these experiences is a living reality for them, or 

[354] 



THE PASSING OF THE MOUNTAINEER 

at least a memory of the present generation at Joppa. 
They know at first hand what it is to grub out a Httle 
farm in the forest; they are hving to-day in log-cabins; 
the larder is still furnished with game ; and their men too 
often " tote " guns to church. The school-bookmaker 
forgot that we have " contemporary ancestors." 

In the narrow cabins of this little settlement were 
gathered some thirty pupils from other communities. 
There were no decent accommodations for them, no op- 
portunity for studious quiet, and frequently an undesir- 
able crowding of boys and girls in the same house. Some- 
times whole families came to keep house for themselves 
in unfinished attics. Such conditions of life were no ad- 
vance upon the homes from which they came, and the best 
the school could do for them scarcely overcame the handi- 
cap of their bad accomodations. It was felt that we must 
make a place where such students could have proper over- 
sight and the influence of a well-ordered Christian home. 
There was a large store building which some too ambitious 
villager had begun and had been unable to finish. It 
stood exactly between the home and the school property. 
This was purchased, with some two acres of land, and 
transformed into a dining-hall and dormitory. One is 
almost ashamed to tell how little it has all cost. The 
lady teachers and student girls, under the charge of 
a competent matron, occupy this building. The old 
teachers' home has become a dormitory for boys under 
the charge of the principal and his wife. That we dared 
to attempt to make this great addition to our equipment 
was due to the fact that the principal, a veteran of mis- 
sion service in Japan, was an expert carpenter and builder 
as well as preacher and teacher. The community cooper- 
ated most cordially, contributing the hauling of all mate- 
rial and much of the work. A fund for furnishing the 

[355] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

new building was solicited by the teachers. A roomy but 
rickety barn went with the place, and this has been re- 
built so as to include a commodious shop for manual train- 
ing. There is sufficient land for considerable work in agri- 
culture, and the institution must have a horse, cows, pigs, 
and poultry. With these it might not merely educate its 
pupils, but also lead the community in rural efficiency. 

Thus runs the simple story. The warrant for such a 
school's existence is the extreme present need of its neigh- 
borhood and constituency. It is admirably adapting 
itself at small expense to the day's task. Teachers from 
the hills are already demanding an advanced course to 
help them meet the rising educational standards of the 
state. As to the future, we shall see when the time comes ; 
meanwhile, and for its own place, its service is indispensable. 

The little mill village of Lynn, North Carolina, in the 
upper Pacolet Valley, shows the missionary school stand- 
Lynn a School ^^S ^y t^^ mountaineer in his hour of indus- 
in a Mill trial and social transition. Gathered here 

Village ijj rows of company houses, he has put off 

many of the external peculiarities of his isolated cabin 
life. He has changed his clothes, but not his manner of 
speech, nor his inner habit of thought. The school is 
helping him to modify both. Winter residents from the 
North, who befriended many such enterprises, and the 
Lynn mill owner, have, in time past, cooperated in the 
school's support. There are two teachers and some sev- 
enty pupils. Last year they had hard times in the cotton 
industry, and the mill ran with a depleted labor force, 
consequently the school was full. In normal times it is 
a great temptation to the parents to send their children 
to work instead, and the philanthropy of the employer, 
when he is shorthanded, is not altogether proof against 
his covctousness of the child as a worker. 

[356] 



THE PASSING OF THE MOUNTAINEER 

The schoolhouse is the community's sole public build- 
ing. Here in turn preachers from the neighboring town 
conduct services. The teachers assist the Sunday-school, 
devise entertainments, and make their mission home a 
center of social life for the young people. They go into 
the homes of the village with counsel and good cheer. 
With an additional worker the enterprise might be con- 
verted into a full-fledged social settlement. As it is, what- 
ever Lynn has of intellectual and spiritual inspiration 
must radiate from two devoted women ; otherwise it is 
drowned in the clatter of the spindles. 

Ten miles or so up the mountam at Saluda is a girls' 
boarding-school, a favorite type of missionary institution. 
The Girls' T^^G mistress of the mountain home holds so 

Seminary, critical a place in "the redemption of her 

Saluda people that she deserves special training. 

She needs to be taught equally how to cook and how to 
hope; how to tend a household and also how to nourish 
ideals before she comes to have a home of her own. She 
will almost surely teach in the log schoolhouse of her 
settlement. There come also planters' daughters from 
the lowlands over the South Carolina border, from homes 
less poor but equally crude and devoid of the graces of 
life. Added to these are the children of a few winter 
residents and the village boys as day pupils. All told, 
they make a company of some one hundred and twenty-five. 

School and home occupy, in common, an ancient and 
decrepit building set up in a gully in a day when the 
proximity of a spring was the chief consideration. Its 
stairways and halls are so illogical and labyrinthine that 
visitors sometimes threaten to unwind a skein of yam to 
help them find their way out again. Yet here, in the 
companionship of half a dozen true and gentle women from 
the North, the mountain schoolgirl learns lessons of char- 

[357] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

acter and taste. Instinctively she catches new ways of 
dressing her hair and gathering her skirts. Her slackness 
is partly drilled out of her, and partly crowded out, by 
new desires and incentives to personal adornment. Apathy 
gives way to interest. I recall a rare day when a group 
of such girls had an outing down in a valley where a 
gentle-souled man had placed a pipe-organ in a gothic 
chapel. The tempered light streamed through cathedral 
glass, and shadows plaj'^ed in the recesses of the timbered 
ceiling, while he poured his own tenderness and devotion 
through the organ tones. The girls' eyes were big with 
wonder. They said little, but the memory will never die. 
New depths and dimensions of experience were added to 
the old enchantments of mountain spring and the glow 
of the full-blown rhododendron. Thus simple opportun- 
ity expands the mountain maid's heart. The dilapidated 
mission-school building is no longer an advance upon her 
standards of thought. She deserves a better one, and 
must have it — a worthy girl's home, safe, sanitary, and 
beautiful. The project has been begun. The village has 
given a hilltop overlooking the old gully and promises a 
thousand dollars — no small sum considering its re- 
sources — while the release of certain funds through the 
progress of the mountains, elsewhere, will permit the Mis- 
sionary Association to erect a new dormitory at Saluda. 

Outside of the actual mountains, as its name sug- 
gests — though in sight of them — is Piedmont College, 

„. , T at Demorest, in northern Georgia. It in- 

Higher In- ' '^ 

stitutions: cludes elementary, secondary, and college 

Piedmont courses. As in the case of the higher in- 

^^^ stitutions for negroes, only a small fraction 

of its students are of collegiate grade. 

The village of Demorest was founded in the eighties, 
by a company of Northern health and home seekers, who 

[3581 



THE PASSING OF THE MOUNTAINEER 

sought to give their children school privileges which 
Georgia was not furnishing, by the establishment of a local 
institute. With the years the original colony was broken 
up and dispersed, while the community grew by the coming 
of recruits from the neighboring Appalachian counties. 
Thus the opportunity of educational ministry to the na- 
tive population increased at the same time that the hotels, 
boarding-houses, and other monuments of the colony's 
adventurous youth were on the market for a song. The 
situation was seized upon by representatives of the small 
but able and aggressive Congregational element in Georgia, 
centering in Atlanta, as an opportunity for the establish- 
ment of an institution which should both express their 
denominational aspirations and serve the roughest and 
neediest section of the state. In its missionary aspect it 
appealed also to the American Missionary Association, 
which finally acquired the property; it took over the In- 
stitute on a long-time lease, and has since been its chief 
source of support. The property consists of four large 
and several smaller buildings, commodious enough, but 
scattered, particularly on the several hilltops of the vil- 
lage, and ill adapted to school purposes. A board of 
trustees consisting of local citizens and representatives 
of the Association and of the Georgia Congregational 
churches manages the institution, subject to the approval 
of its financial budget by the Association. 

The situation is not without its problems. Though 
not superior in equipment nor in results to the more 
Problems of modest schools, the elementary and secondary 
the Higher courses of Piedmont College — wliich nu- 

Institutions merically are over nineteen-twentieths of it 
— are conducted at unusual expense. This is because they 
are included in a collegiate scheme of administration and 

[359 ] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

remuneration. The interesting and inspiring plan of unit- 
ing North and South, highland and lowland, in commun- 
ity and school is also expensive. A student minority, 
coming from the cotton belt, and even from the cities, is 
not satisfied with a standard of living which seems ample 
to mountain boys and girls. The lingering Northern 
tradition in Demorest is favorable to culture, but costs 
money. To attract and hold students of collegiate grade, 
especially in a state well supplied with higher institutions 
as Georgia is, the academic fashions of wealthier schools 
have to be imitated. This makes their financial support 
difficult, and their dependence on scholarship aid corre- 
spondingly great. Is it justifiable to take of scant mis- 
sionary funds to do at Piedmont what (except for the 
college department) is done elsewhere at much less 
expense? 

There is only one justification, namely, that Piedmont 
shall train leaders, that it shall make standards of the 
Th ■ T ffi- higher life for picked men of the mountains, 
cation in the as they return to share the transformation 
Training of of their native sects, or follow opportunity 
to the lowlands and the city. It is a young 
institution, as yet an experiment, but a brave and hopeful 
experiment, which, under gallant and tireless leaders, is 
steadily endeavoring to make itself a vital and indispensa- 
ble part in the redemption of the twenty-six Appalachian 
counties of North Georgia and of their needy and abound- 
ing human wealth. 

The case of this institution suggests two principles 
The Inevitable °^ missionary pohcy, which every sup- 
Cost of Such porter of such endeavor in behalf of our 
Training unassimilated peoples should understand. 

First, the inevitable cost of training for leadership. 

[ 360 1 




Professors and Students, Atlanta Theological Seminary 




Girls' Dormitory, Piedmont College 



THE PASSING OF THE MOUNTAINEER 

Provision for the higher education of any people must 
necessarily approximate that of the standard institutions 
of the nation. Shorn of all extravagances and reduced 
to the lowest terms of support sufficient for efficiency, 
colleges must have a collegiate grade of instruction and 
equipment. Their product must compete on behalf of 
their people with our best. If they are really to furnish 
competent leaders they must have adequate fitting. Mis- 
sionary agencies should be very slow to undertake the 
responsibility of colleges, and very insistent that, after 
due testing, they be either properly supported or aban- 
doned as higher institutions. 

Second, the prior claim of the principle of diffusion 
of opportunity. This is the heart of missionary obliga- 
rp, p . tion. It must minister widely and in places 

Claim of the of special need. This principle is funda- 
Diffusion of mental from the standpoint of assimilating 
ppo urn y |.j^g under- Americanized ; it is also inevit- 
able in view of the relation of a missionary board to its 
constituency. The annual support of such a board comes 
chiefly from armies of relatively small givers, many of 
whom are by no means able to send their children to col- 
lege, from feeble churches, from children and young 
people. They are told of the needy masses of alien 
blood and narrow opportunity. However important the 
education of leaders from the standpoint of the strategy 
of group development, the larger number of givers in- 
tend that their gifts shall minister to these people 
on the humble levels of their need. This fact sets a 
strict limit to the proportion of its resources which 
a missionary organization may justly spend on the 
higher or otherwise more expensive forms of edu- 
cation. 

__ 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

The American Missionary Association has always held 

this principle sacred. As indicated in an earlier chapter, 

>-, J ^. it has graduated into independence some of 

Graduating ^ ... . , 

Missionary the largest of negro institutions previously 

Colleges into under its control. Berea College, incompar- 
epen ence ably the most influential single mountain in- 
stitution, was for many years fostered by the Association, 
which still holds certain trust funds in its behalf. Here 
are gathered about half as many students as in all the As- 
sociation's mountain schools, but they are educated at an 
annual cost many fold greater. In technical trade-educa- 
tion Berea can do for the young mountaineer — as Tuske- 
gee and Hampton can do for the young negro — what no 
school of the Association can do. Its work is abundantly 
worth all it costs, but it would not be a legitimate expen- 
diture of funds for the Association to support at any 
one place in the mountains, a school at Berea's scale of 
expense. For a missionary board the diffusion of oppor- 
tunity is the better part. The continuance of this prin- 
ciple necessitates the early graduation of another group 
of the Association's schools, both white and colored, into 
independent support. They are now absorbing more than 
a just proportion of resources. Their adequate develop- 
ment is impossible out of the current gifts of the existing 
constituency. Tliis the Association has recognized by de- 
termining at its last annual meeting to make the centennial 
of Lincoln's birth the occasion of a campaign for the 
endowment of five of the most advanced schools. In the 
case of Piedmont College, both Mr. Carnegie and Dr. 
Pearsons have anticipated this plan with conditional pledges, 
as has the Association itself by a special endowment 
grant. 

Training for leadership in one line, namely, the minis- 

[362 1 



THE PASSING OF THE MOUNTAINEER 

try, is the accepted task of the Christian masses. Neither 
the state nor private philanthropy assumes this burden. 
^j, . . ^. The churches expect, and more readily re- 
isters: Atlanta spond to appeals in behalf of schools for reli- 
Theological gious professional education. None has ever 
beminary ^^^ ^^ good a case as Atlanta Theological 

Seminary. The great city whose name it bears was created 
by the convergence of railroads at the southern extremity 
of the Appalachians. All the highways which touch the 
mountains meet here before passing on to every quarter 
of the South. The South, highland, and lowland com- 
bined, has but five independent Protestant schools for 
ministerial training, the most adequate of which are all 
located at the extreme northern boundary. Moreover 
the schism of social classes has left the churches of the 
humbler people virtually without an educated ministry. 
Undoubtedly, the relative provision for the training of 
negroes as ministers is greater than that for whites, whose 
need Is not less. There are also some two hundred 
little, scattered, and chiefly rural churches bearing the 
Congregational name, whose ministers must be educated 
in the South, If at aU. They are come-outers from un- 
progressive Southern sects, and for social prestige and 
financial ability by no means constitute a denominational 
asset. To furnish these with effective spiritual leader- 
ship Is a task offering httle sectarian, but great patriotic 
and Christian satisfaction. It touches the belated white 
man of the Southern lowlands, who shares the crisis of the 
sifting of the South as well as the mountaineer. Its ac- 
ceptance at the beginning only complicates the race situ- 
ation 'by Introducing the- problem of the ecclesiastical 
relations of white and negro churches. Before it Is com- 
pleted it will surely contribute to the Christian solution 

[363] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

of that problem at the point where the clash of races is 
now most violent. 

Externally, scarcely any school is less impressive than 
the Seminary. There is merely a none-too-modern brick 
Guidincthe dwelling-house, surrounded by the ruins of 
Pilgrims in once pretentious grounds, on a wind-swept 

their Crisis ^^^ overlooking Atlanta. The students, 
many of them ordained men with families, constitute an 
interesting and earnest group. A virile and aggressive 
president carries as a personal burden the annual solici- 
tation of nearly half the expenses of the institution, and 
pleads in faith for a modest set of buildings which shall de- 
cently house the school.^ These are necessary to perpetu- 
ate present achievement and to provide for a spiritually 
magnificent future. A little group of professors, whose 
names have been honorable for eloquence, teaching power 
and missionary service, are giving their declining years to 
this splendid, underpaid ministry. The active pastors of 
Atlanta share their time gratuitously with the institution. 
It has as many students as three Northei-n Congrega- 
tional seminaries. The earnestness and practical atmos- 
phere of its classroom is in happy contrast with the 
dry-as-dust spirit and scholastic coldness of too many insti- 
tutions, similar in name but not in practise. In a hundred 
years we shall garnish the sepulchres of these prophets ; 
we are starving them now. Yet they are meeting a crisis 
where the mountain paths converge and where the feet 
of new pilgrims are passing into the broader ways and 
sterner conflicts of a new South, and of the nation of 
which it is a part. 

In a region undergoing such radical transition as are 

' Since the writing of the text, funds have been secured for a school 
building and a president's home. 

[364] 



THE PASSING OF THE MOUNTAINEER 

the mountains, corresponding radical readjustments of 
missionary agencies are frequently necessary. Thus at 
R d" I T - Williamsburg, Kentucky, was located one of 
sitions aud the largest and oldest of missionary schools, 

Radical Re- Highland College. The Northern preacher 
long preceded the railroad and reached the 
settlement before it ever had a church building of its own. 
Once a frame had been raised, and pulled doWn again 
on a drunken wager of ox-team against ox-team. For 
a quarter of a century a school was supported, wliich 
educated some of the brainiest of mountain politicians, 
which served as a center for educational and evangel- 
istic activity, and set the standards of the higher life 
for the entire region. Meanwhile the race issue had 
arisen. Berea had maintained for years the coeducation 
of negroes and wliites, and the Association's fidelity at 
Williamsburg to the same pohcy was the occasion of the 
establishment of a sectarian school. The deeper cause 
was the aroused spirit of progress in the mountaineers 
themselves. After the erection of the mission church in 
a neighboring settlement, they took hoes and scraped the 
primeval filth from the floor of the native meeting-house. 
At Williamsburg, emulation took the form of educational 
rivalry. With new ambitions came ability to satisfy them. 
The mountains at length produced the native millionaire. 

Through shrewd dealing in coal lands he made his 
The Coming fortune. He was willing to buy out the mis- 
of the Native sion school at a price coveiing the entire 
Milhonaire: property investment of twenty-five years, 
of the Old " -^^^ ^^^^ represented two-thirds of the tribu- 
Men of the tary population. Their school had caught 

Mountains ^]-^q contagion not only of culture, but some- 

what of liberality. Highland College was sold. It had 

[ oGo ] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

done its essential work and the investment was more 
needed elsewhere. The community had not reached the 
standard of the more favored regions either in wealth or 
culture, but it was on the way. Its distinctive traits of 
a quarter of a century ago no longer dominated it, and 
remained only as the badge of the submerged classes. 
As a social group its people had emerged and developed 
the institutions necessary to conserve their gains. The 
cooperation of missionary and millionaire had hastened 
the passing of the mountaineer. The future, material and 
spiritual, was safe in the hands of their joint product, the 
normally equipped American. Thus, locality by locality, 
the mountains cease to present a national problem, need- 
ing the ministries of special nationalizing agencies. What 
was merely temporary backwardness in their peculiar Ufe 
is left behind ; the rest, bad and good, merges with the 
common life of the nation. 

"I pass but cannot die." 

So somehow within the deed and heart of America will 
abide the contribution of the Southern highlander. 



[366] 



XII. DOES THE PURPOSE OF GOD 
THWART THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST? 

I. THE MORAL SIFTING OF THE NATION ON THE 
RACE ISSUE 

CENTURY after century has marched by since that 
great movement began which has monopohzed nine- 
tenths of recorded history and which we call the 
progress of Western civilization ; but never has Aryan 
supremacy been challenged until within this decade. At- 

T^T .J tila's Huns could not permanently threaten 

New Ardor . ^ -' 

and Stubborn- the racial balance of power ; an awakened 
nessof Race- Orient does. Our breed of men has met this 
^ ^ challenge with an ardor and stubbornness of 

race feeling" new to Christendom. This feeling creates a 
crisis for Christianity itself. 

Once the heathen was a perishing soul, hard to get at — 
and we loved him. Later he became a consuming body, 
part of a world-market, worshiping idols made in Con- 
necticut — and we tolerated him. Finally he became a 
participating fellow in common civilization, a neighbor — 
and we hated him. Recently he has taken an active hand 
in affairs — and we propose to put him out. Everywhere 
it is the same — in Australia, South Africa, Canada, the 
United States ; all the seats of Anglo-Saxon Empire raise 
the cry, Exclusion ! Deportation ! Race prejudice, a natu- 
ral self-protective instinct, has roused and shaken itself. 
This compels heart searching in all our traditional Chris- 
tian activities, and puts the missionary impulse itself on 
trial. 

[367] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

Let us clearly understand why. Race-feeling to-day 
rises in the face of a tremendous fact, a new world-unity. 
It is Forced World-politics, world-science, world-commerce 
to Extremes and industry have made this earth an open- 
by Revul^^on ^qqj.^^ commonwealth of mankind. It also 
rrom the Social . . i , xt- i • 

Applications confronts a new religious ideal. Within this 

of Christianity new world men have seen the social vision of 
the gospel which compels them to look beyond individual 
salvation to the actual and active contacts of redeemed 
men in the kingdom of God. The impact of these two 
facts immediately forces race-feehng of a naive, instinc- 
tive character and compels it to forge weapons. Slave- 
holder theology believed in heaven for human chattels ; 
mercantile philanthropy thanked God for souls new-born 
in India ; the old missionary evangelism converted a 
heathen and left the institutions of Turkey or China to 
stand the moral shock and take the social consequences ; 
but convert a heathen at home, and American institutions 
have to stand the moral shock and take the social con- 
sequences. What these consequences are, race-feeling 
clearly discloses. One cannot evangelize a man and then 
shut the door of human fellowship in his face. Within 
twenty-five years, I venture, no American with a shred 
of honesty will dare engage in foreign missions unless 
race-feeling in America is conquered. These comparatively 
insignificant race-contacts will inevitably follow the spirit 
and fashion of the massive, permanent, and significant con- 
The Pickets tacts within the national life. Christianity 
will Cease to must face the social consequences of asking 
Fraternize ^^^ j^^^ ^^^ f^^^-i ^f q^^ rj.^^ ^^^^ ^^^. 

when the . . . '' i • i . " i 

Armies Begin sionary impulse is at stake in the struggle 

to Fight with ascendant race-feeling; for missions in 

the modern world must mean the participation of men 

[368] 



THE PURPOSE OF GOD 



in common civilization. Whether we shall evangelize at 
all is to be determined here — under the stars and stripes. 
A momentous phase of the present race issue in the 
United States is the growing consciousness that it is con- 
Critical Signifi- tinuous with the world-struggle of classes 
cance of and races and that its outcome is profoundly 

.■ fR _ significant for all mankind. Race adjust- 
Issue for all ment is a universal problem of civilization. 
Mankind The echoes of this fact already are heard in 

our controversial literature. Our negro press took on a 
tone of triumph at the victory of Japan over Russia as 
that of a colored over a white race. The later apologies 
for the white South's race-policy deliberately argues from 
Anglo-Saxon practise at the antipodes. Mr. Ray Stan- 
nard Baker shows ^ that in the large the negro's unrest 
is of a piece with the under-man's struggle all over the 
world. America is naturally the central theater of this 
struggle ; for here we have theoretically taken the most 
ideal ground upon race relations. The world is concerned 
in our endeavor to make good our theories. Succeeding 
or failing, we are molding the destinies of mankind. 

II. MORAL STRUGGLE COMPLICATED BY 
INTELLECTUAL DIFFICULTIES 

The moral struggle in which we are thus involved is 
Assumed Au- peculiarly complicated to-day by intellectual 
thority of difficulties. The most critical of them is a 

1 *^H^v' d \ peculiar authority which race-feeling gets 
Concerning from the belief that it is justified by science. 
Races Yesterday Scripture was appealed to in its 

favor; to-day, Sociology. For the myth of divine origin 



" Following the Color-Line," p. 269. 
[ 369 ] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

of favored stocks we have substituted the doctrine of 
chosen people by natural selection. The past, it is taught, 
revealed the sifting of human races ; the present sees the 
crowning of the fit to rule ; the future must witness the 
elimination of the unfit who else will inevitably beguile 
and entangle the chosen races to their doom. As a coun- 
sel of practical duty this doctrine takes two forms: first, 
it is a doctrine of the active suppression of the unfit — 
applied Darwinism, the gospel of racial aggression, which 
is the name of a better humanity, would crowd the nature 
peoples from the earth; second, it is a doctrine of the 
passive suppression of the unfit — race segregation, which 
is to be vigorously enforced by social policy until nature 
eliminates the unfit by her slow, inexorable processes.^ 

In its application to races this doctrine of the survival 
of the fittest gets the unfair backing of many instinctive 
Stated in its ^^^ carefully cherished prejudices. It can 
Widest Bear- only be j udged fairly in its broadest and 
^^^ most general application not to races but 

within races. Logically it ought to demand the elimina- 
tion of our parents when they are old, of our children 
while they are weak, and of ourselves when we are sick. 
It saves, at best, not all Aryans, or Anglo-Saxons, but 
only long-headed blondes. President Roosevelt ought to 
have been slaughtered, and Sir Walter Scott before him, 
because of their puny youth. Actually the issue is often 
theoretically raised in most serious and authoritative sci- 
entific discussions of heredity as related to the pauper, 
the consumptive, or the alcoholic. In a savage society 
these would soon succumb. What is the effect on the 
future health and strength of the race of their preserva- 

* Finot, Race Prejudice, Pt. I, ch. i, "The Gospel of Inequality and its 
Prophets," §§ 5, 6. 

[370] 



THE PURPOSE OF GOD 



tion by the humane ministries of modern society — char- 
ity, the hospital, moral reform? By example and by 
heredity will they not perpetuate their weaknesses to the 
deterioration of the race? Is it not better that present 
victims be sacrificed than that the unborn should suffer? 

Logically this is a serious dilemma; practically it in- 
volves profound problems. It can only be met by an 
adequate scientific answer, which later we shall attempt 
to suggest. Yet when it touches those near-at-hand classes 
who are protected by the humane sentiment, the average 
man dismisses it with the crass comment of his morning 
paper, " a scientist talks nonsense." ^ We take this doc- 
trine complacently, however, when applied to the man of 
other races than ours. Half of us are quite wilhng to 
give him a push over the precipice (to use Nietzsche's 
kindly metaphor) ; most of the other half are easily re- 
signed to leaving him outside the pale of civilized asso- 
ciations till he vanishes before our expanding empire. 

There is still a further step; the missionary impulse 

is formally arraigned by the dogma of race inferiority 

™, ,,. . on the authority of science. Pro-Arvan 

1 he JMission- 1 

ary Impulse champions take a vein of high solemnity. 

Formally " You can't afford to be kind to the lower 

Arraigned ^^^^^ . j^ j^ wicked." The spirit of Christ 

is definitely rebuked when it would exercise its nature 
toward the backward folk. Scientific qualms turn pious. 
We are warned " especially against the emotions of sym- 
pathy, of pity for the unfortunate race, the ' man of 
yesterday,' whom the unfeeling processes of nature de- 
mand in sacrifice upon the altar of the Evolution of 

' See editorial in New York Times on Prof. Wm. Ridgeway's address 
before the Anthropological Section of the British Association, September 7, 
1908. 



[371] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

Humanity." The issue is frankly put : " May not the 
strong Caucasian lend a helping hand to his weaker Afri- 
can brother, lift him up, and the two walk along hand in 
hand through the centuries? This is a very idyllic pic- 
ture — but a moment's reflection must show how inade- 
quate and unreal this dew of Hermon." ^ " All flesh is 
not the same flesh ; star differeth from star in glory " ; 
therefore concerning the races we are solemnly adjured, 
" What God hath put asunder, let not man join together." 

In like vein writes a Southern reviewer of " The Negro 
in the South " (by Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. 
Washington). He finds the keynote to Dr. Du Bois' con- 
tribution in the following quotation : " Who can doubt 
that if Christ came to Georgia to-day one of His first 
deeds would be to sit down and take supper with black 
men, and who can doubt the outcome if He did.^" " The 
reviewer's comment is : " Upon the short-sightedly senti- 
mental ideal or Christian basis it may be admitted that 
Professor Bu Bois has the best of the argument. But," 
he goes on to remind us, " the laws of nature and not 
the imperfect and changing interpretations of the prin- 
ciples of any ethical system, Christian or other, determine 
the fates of men and of races in bulk." He concludes: 
" As the nation could not exist permanently half slave 
and half free, so it cannot exist permanently seven-eighths 
white and one-eighth black. White or black must perish 
in the end. Which is the most likely to perish.'^ " - The 
negro, it appears. His elimination is declared to be " an 
inevitable, far-off divine event," against which it is both 
foolish and wicked to strive. 

The axe is thus laid at the root of the tree of Christian 

> Smith, " The Color-Line," pp. x, 188. 
2 "H. I. B." in New York Times. 
-_ 



THE PURPOSE OF GOD 



missions and its edge is this : Does the purpose of God 
thwart the spirit of Christ? May we evangehze and edu- 
The Axe at cate, or does God forbid? When Jesus says, 
the Root of " Make learners of all nations," does God 
the Iree g^^^^ "No, some haven't brains enough"? 

When the voice sounds, " Feed my sheep," must we reply, 
" Yea, Lord, thou knowest that we love thee, but what 
you take for sheep are only goats "? 

This is no academic question. So subtle are the infec- 
tions of race-feeling that thousands of men of Christian 
instinct (whether they have articulated the fear or not) 
are not sure whether, after all, God himself is not against 
missionary endeavor for the most backward races ; whether 
the full Christian hope, especially for the negro, is not 
mistaken ; whether the participation of his race with ours, 
in the Christian civilization of America, is not impossible, 
because of natural racial inequality which God intended. 

III. EXAMINATION OF THE ALLEGED VERDICT OF 

SCIENCE 

The remedy for this condition is chiefly moral. As a 
challenge to the Christian spirit it must primarily be met 
by the Christian spirit. Concerning instinc- 
tive race antipathy we have nothing to say; 
the passion of brotherhood must conquer it. But in so 
far as the difficulty is intellectual, it admits of intellectual 
treatment. The alleged findings of science may be met 
on their own ground. These Philistines also are men, 
and as such we may fight them. 

Race antipathy instinctively seizes upon distasteful 
physical peculiarities in other human varieties as evidences 
of their inferiority. Color is the most outstanding ex- 

[373 1 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

ample. To say authoritatively what significance color 
may have, if any, is the business of anthropology ; and 
to this science we first appeal. 

First, then, the most violent pro-Ayran anthropology 
is infinitely milder than the popular prejudice it is al- 
leged to justify. That prejudice sees the lowest white 
man on the throne and the highest colored man licking the 
dust under his footstool. A supposed justification of it 
is found in the conception that there are feral races, 
physically intermediate between true man and brute. 
This view has not the slightest scientific standing. The 
contrary facts are that physically each race approaches 
the brute at some points, and departs at other points, 
but no race is feral at all points, or at so many more 
than others that it is thus distinguished. If in the 
exchange of interracial amenities, for example, one is 
moved to exclaim, " You great black brute ! " the retort 
courteous might be, " You great hairy brute ! " If one 
says, " Your long arms remind me of an ape," the scien- 
tific reply would be, " Your short legs remind me of the 
same beast." In brief, the white race has simian charac- 
teristics which the black race lacks, and vice versa. But 
the utmost that any anthropology claims is a slight average 
superiority in the white race. In height, bulk, strength, 
brain weight, skull capacity, development of forebrain, 
fecundity, longevity, or any other proposed test, that is 
all. Through most of their ranges of mental capacity 
the races are overlapping; most of the individuals of a 
given race have individuals to match them in any other. 
This means, to take the nearest case, that if one should 
line up all the American whites and grade them on the 
scale of 100, he would probably find few blacks to match 
those above 90, more to match those from 80 to 90, more 

[3741 



THE PURPOSE OF GOD 



still as he went down the scale, the middle ranges being 
proportionately equal. No negro can possibly be lower 
than some white men. The bottom of hell is level. No 
one can say dogmatically that there are not ten million 
American whites who could be married to the ten million 
American negroes without biological injury to posterity. 
Of course the social injury would be immeasurable. 

But overlapping races can participate in a common 
civilization. 

Again some one will say — call his name Charles Francis 
Adams — " If the backward people have high natural 
High Capacity capacity why don't they show it ? Measure 
of Backward the unutterable distance between London and 
Peoples Khartoum ! If negroes have brains why don't 

they use them? " The answer is, They do. The back- 
ward peoples positively manifest a high order of mental 
capacity. 

We are not brainier than our fathers ; no one argues 
that we are a biological advance on the Teutonic bar- 
barians. They showed genius in the German forest as 
the savage in the African jungle. How? By not pronely 
accepting the world as they found it; by actively at- 
tacking and transforming their environments. As evi- 
dences of sheer ability to conquer by intelligence, no sub- 
sequent steps in civilization can remotely compare with 
the first. Edison is a poor second to Prometheus and 
Luther Burbank to the squaw who tamed the first dog. 

Still further, their method of mental procedure is ex- 
actly that which we glorify by the high sounding titles 
Superior °^ abstract reasoning and scientific method. 

Intellectual Modem logic is teaching us that every fruit- 
Processes f^i [^Qg^^ jg simply a plan of action, the valid- 
ity of which we discover by trying it. We have absolutely 

_- 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

no other resource, no esoteric Aryan guaranty of truth. 
Did the Hawaiians plant Captain Cook's iron nails think- 
ing that they would grow? Absurd? Then yesterday's 
physical science was equally absurd in its static concep- 
tion of matter. That iron would grow, and that matter 
was made up of atoms, were both perfectly worthy hy- 
potheses, but neither worked. Consequently the savant 
ceased to treat matter atomically ; the savage ceased to 
plant nails. Each used the same method, one profession- 
ally, the other popularly. One had more accumulated 
knowledge, but he was not wiser than the other; particu- 
larly he did not show some exalted mental faculty which 
the other lacked. 

Moreover, the most significant wisdom of all is that 
which counsels concerning human life. This is the core 
Practical of all philosophies. The Aryan masses do 

Philosophy not know Plato, but they have a popular 

philosophy infinitely more revealing of the race mind. 
But so has the West African. " Full-belly child says to 
hungry-belly child, ' Keep good cheer.' " We say, " It 's 
easy to bear others' misfortunes." Is our version better? 
" I 'm not so angry at the man who killed me as at the 
man who hurled me on the ground afterward." Is " add- 
ing insult to injury " apter? " Quick marrying a woman 
means quick unmarrying a woman." What more can one 
ask as a passport to our Christian civilization? In brief, 
the practical philosophy of life is for savage and civilized 
essentially similar. 

Or turn to the supreme moral quality, self-control. Are 
the nature-peoples popularly characterized as impulsive. 
Capacity for subject to uncontrollable instinct and chance 
Self-Control passions? Yet no life is so bound as theirs 
with ceremonialism, and ceremonialism means the subor- 

[376] 



THE PURPOSE OF GOD 



dination of impulses. The law of tabu hedges conduct at 
every turn. It says " No " to the most imperious impulses 
and is obeyed. Would the American starve rather than 
eat the sacred seal sporting before his hut.^^ The Eskimo 
will. Would he take the holy serpent's fang in his breast 
rather than kill it ? The West African will. Are our cities 
safe from civic looters because an unseen power guards 
them.'* Tlie Hottentots' possessions are in the jungle. 
The natural man is probably challenged and restrained 
by law at more points — not the same points, to be sure 
— under heathenism than under Christianity. Moral 
control is not a whit less real, inclusive, or effectual. 

In significant achievement, then, as well as in natural 
capacity, the races are overlapping. All of this does 
No Race ^^^ prove equality. We are not talking 

Unfit for about equality, but about the inclusion of 

Civilization |^j^g backward races in a common civilization. 
Can the negro be fitted for American citizenship.'* So far 
as anthropology testifies of his natural capacity. Yes. 
No race can be saved wholesale ; nor need any race be 
lost wholesale. All races, biologically speaking, are fit 
to survive and participate in and contribute to human 
society. 

But the argument must be pushed still further; for 
however favorable the verdict of anthropology concern- 
. ing the backward races, and however con- 
clusive against doctrines of their necessary 
elimination, either by the active or by the passive method, 
it is not immediately applicable to social perplexities. 
We asked whether the races could participate in a common 
civilization and were assured that all were capable and 
fit to survive. That is not an answer to our question. 
For such an answer we must go to Sociology — the sci- 

[377] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

ence of human association. Specifically, our question is 
this: Granting corresponding natural capacities and gen- 
eral mental endowments, may not the difference in detail 
in the mental tendencies of the races be so fixed as to 
make their inclusion in common interest and activities 
forever impossible? We know of brilliant individuals who 
could by no means hve together. May not this be the 
case also of capable races? We answer, They may learn 
to live together. There are no specific differences of race 
mind which are beyond the control of education. 

The organic basis of race traits can only be interpreted 
in terms of instinct. There are inborn tendencies which 
M t I Tr "L ™^^k^ ^^6 white act in a different manner 
of Race from that in which the black would act in the 

not beyond presence of the same stimulus. But what of 
Education -^p gij^ij^r and not smaller tendencies exist 

to make one white man act differently from another. Be- 
sides, there is nothing fixed or invincible about these dif- 
ferences. Psychology knows nothing of relentless in- 
stincts. Every one has lost dozens of them. Thus it is 
no excuse for race antipathy to call it " instinctive." 
Unchastity is equally instinctive. No specific race-trait is 
half so deep-seated as the common and elemental impulses 
which the moral life undertakes to control. Of those which 
intrude into the moral realm only two — the instincts 
of self-preservation and of the propagation of the kind 
— are especially unyielding. All the rest may be molded, 
suppressed, or recharged. Most of them, unless fixed 
and reenforced by habit, die of themselves. And among 
the most fleeting of them, the feeblest and latest bom, are 
the instinctive race-differences. 

The proof of such actual modification and the assimi- 
lation of one mental type to another is everywhere at 

[378] 



THE PURPOSE OF GOD 



hand. I will risk an illustration from our negro Congre- 
gational brethren. I sometimes go to their church con- 
ferences and find a gravity of manner, a sobriety of ex- 
pression, a restraint of religious utterances which I think 
overdoes the matter. They have, in short, the general 
denominational lack of rehgious spontaneity. 

Now, does any one believe that this result is due to a 
superhuman self-control whereby each colored brother 
painfully suppresses his inner tendency to explosive Halle- 
lujahs.? This is to attribute to him a grip on himself 
which we have not. Is it not rather clear that the ten- 
dency itself has suffered change; that liveliness of emo- 
tion, a proverbial negro trait, has been radically modi- 
fied? In this particular our brother has ceased to be a 
negro and has become a mere Congregationalist. It has 
been a change for the worse, too. Many negro traits 
may he^ hut ought not to be, obliterated by education, being 
of positive and sometimes of unique value to the world. 

But still the objector has a parting shot. " If race 
traits have no deeper organic roots than you say, why 
. .p are they actually so persistent, so stubborn.'' " 

petuation by Again the answer is easy though the appli- 
Social cation is hard. Race characters persist be- 

eredi y cause individuals coming into life, one by 

one, with perfectly plastic racial instincts, have these in- 
stincts fixed, one by one, in a similarity of habit, under 
the action of a common mental and social environment. 
The negro infant develops a negro mind because he grows 
up within a race tradition. He has a negro mother, a 
negro home, a negro community, a negro place in so- 
ciety. These give certainty and permanency to the faint 
organic racial tendencies which were othen^ase lost. The 
technical name for this process is " social heredity," the 

[ 379 ] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

newly recognized significance of which is effectively stated 
by Prof. Simon N. Patten: 

The striking aspect of the recent development of 
thought is the changing concept concerning the part 
heredity plays in life. Men have been trained from 
the earliest times to attach great importance to the 
influence of blood descent upon racial and individual 
character. Some families and peoples are said to 
be inherently superior to others, because they have 
possessed, generation after generation, well-marked 
qualities which others did not have. The differences 
between them were readily explained by heredity, so 
readily, in fact, that more influence was soon given to 
ancestry than to the environment into which a man 
was born. This unequal division of power seems to 
be destroyed by recent discoveries in biology, which 
are estabhsliing a new equilibrium between natural 
or inherited qualities and those acquired after birth. 
Many qualities are inherited, but the number is smaller 
than it was thought to be, and many of them may 
be readily suppressed by the action of the environ- 
ment in which men live, so that they do not show 
themselves for long periods in a particular family 
or a given race. This curtailment of the force of 
physical heredity gives more power to the acquired 
qualities handed on from generation to generation 
as a social tradition. A physical inheritance, simpler 
than we thought, is ours at birth; but there is a 
larger and increasingly important social heredity 
which must be constantly renewed through the con- 
scious efforts of parents and teachers.^ 

The conflict of the educator therefore is not with phys- 
ical heredity, but with that part of the social heredity 

' " New Basis of Civilization," pp. 204, 205. 

[380] 



THE PURPOSE OF GOD 



of his pupils which he cannot control. A classic example 

is the acknowledged inability of the schools to teach the 

„ ^ , masses the mother-tongue. The trouble is 

Control , , , , 1 I • 1 i J.- 

throuo-h, and not that babes are bom predestmed to erratic 

of, Social spelling and grammar, but that homes and 

Heredity streets are also educators, and have the 

first and longest chance at the child. Now, no remoter 
guiding or reforming agency can interpose early or often 
enough between the mother and her child, the intimate 
group and its members, the isolated race and its people. 
Consequently family, group, and race traits are perpetu- 
ated from generation to generation, much as if physical 
heredity were the controlling factor. But for all that it 
is not the controlling factor. Social heredity is; and 
against it the teacher and reformer may do something 
immediately and in the long run, much. 

One thing of vast import that he may immediately do 
is to modify the beliefs of men. On the whole this is 

^, „., - more significant even than any ability to 
The Role of , *= . ^ _.,. * i t i? • 

Chanced Be- change outward conditions. A belier, m a 

liefs in Social peculiarly intimate sense, expresses a man. 
Heredity Change it and the man is changed — as in 

the case of the mulatto. His case is of pathetic and 
thrilling human interest. On the misunderstanding that 
it was chiefly to be explained by the potency of white 
blood it has been used to rob the pure negro of most of 
his racial achievements. 

The true explanation is essentially psychological.^ Un- 
doubtedly the progress of the American negro has been 

» Contrast with this the biological explanations of Stone, Studies in the 
American Race Problem, ch. ix, "The Mulatto Factor." In general har- 
mony with the position of this book, see Ross, " Foundations of Sociology," 
pp. 320, 321. ^^^ 



381] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

disproportionately the progress of a mulatto group ; its 
leadership disproportionately mulatto leadership. Be- 
Control cause the mulatto is biologically superior? 

through Social No ; because he believes in the superiority 
Heredity ^f j^g trickle of white heredity. Repeatedly 

I 've heard from men of low mentality, " You can't scare 
me ; I 've white blood in me." Result : they are not 
scared. Mere behef.'* Well, there is nothing mightier 
in the universe. " By faith the walls of Jericho fell 
down." The latest word of philosophy is that the nature 
of a thing is what it does. " That is different which 
makes a difference." Mentally the mulatto is not a negro, 
not because he is the product of mixed blood, but because 
he is the product of a mixed and modified race tradition. 
Any social group which experiences common modifications 
of an old race tradition is a new type, as worthy of sci- 
entific recognition as an " original " race. To think other- 
wise is a pure superstition of classification. " If any 
man is in Christ there is a new creation." This is a 
rigidly scientific statement. Social psychology teaches 
that men are transformed in essential personality by the 
renewing of their minds. There is no biological fate 
sundering the races, no Inexorable processes of nature 
thwarting the new faith in one's self and one's brethren 
inspired by the spirit of Christ. 

In so far as hard and cramping tradition is not chal- 
lenged and broken through by new and energizing beliefs, 

cj , ^. social heredity works out human destiny as 

belection ac- . « . i • i i i 

cording to relentlessly as if it were true physical hered- 

Social ity, and consequently beyond human control. 

ere i y j^^ effective results come to much the same 

thing. According to Its dictates men are selected for 

high or low estate. Custom, law, Institutions, possessions, 

[382] 



THE PURPOSE OF GOD 



and social pressure conspire to bring some into life, heirs 
of self-confidence and traditional prestige, controlling the 
accumulated wealth and the manifold machinery of civi- 
lization. Others, by arbitrary discrimination of birth, 
lack all these advantages and go in the mass as though 
naturally predestined to a lower place. As between races, 
belief and wealth exalt the white as the socially elect, and 
abase the black ; within the white race, they exalt the rich 
and abase the poor. There is not a vestige of scientific 
proof that these contrasts in any wise register the dis- 
tribution of natural capacity by physical heredity. Its 
distribution is indeed unequal but it does not at all follow 
racial or class lines. 

Vast and unmeasured numbers of the disinherited are 
simply normal human beings whose average capacities 
Suppressed are socially suppressed; partly through 
Classes under-nourishment and other environmental 

handicaps which lower their physical tone, and partly 
through paralyzing beliefs in natural inferiority which 
forbid them to hope for themselves and prevent society 
from doing its best in their behalf. The rich and the 
successful as a class have not more strength and capacity 
than the average run of natural men, nor the poor less ; 
but social environments in the latter case do not allow 
the effective expression of nature's gifts, nor even their 
self-discovery. An alien and pauper race included in a 
highly self-appreciative and arrogant civilization becomes, 
in the nature of the case, a suppressed class. It shows 
the typical traits of poverty-men which, in its case, espe- 
cially, are mistakenly charged to physical heredity. 

Such a social situation hardens into a caste system 
whenever ultimate sanctions are supplied to fix the results 
of arbitrary social sifting. Whenever the philosophy 

[383] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

and religion of a dominant group unite to justify its 
present advantage, and especially whenever a disinherited 
The Caste group comes to accept its place as in the 

System nature of things, a deadlock is reached which 

is more hopeless than if it were indeed the result of physical 
heredity. For physical heredity admits of great, though 
limited, possibilities of modifying the individual after he 
is born ; but the fatalism of the caste doctrine makes all 
endeavor hopeless. Such fatalism is the essential atti- 
tude of much American thought, particularly in the South. 
The Booker Washington program is declared to be no 
better than that of the negro radicals: it simply will 
prolong the agony a little; the negro problem has no 
solution. Such an attitude reveals the suppressive weight 
of social heredity at its worst. " Our wrestling is not 
against flesh and blood," but against diabolical ideas, 
against " spiritual wickedness in high places." 

A consideration of the fatal power of the caste idea 
should finally and forever forbid any confidence in statis- 

tical comparisons of social or racial classes in 
Its Results ,, . , , , 1 • 1 • 

no Measure their present status as havmg any bearmg 

of Natural upon relative natural capacity. In the most 

Capacity of advanced civilization eighty per cent of the 

population still belong to the " lower classes." 

Prof. Lester Ward writes : 

Statistical investigations prove that notwithstand- 
ing their superior numbers, they furnish less than ten 
per cent of the agents of civilization, and that rela- 
tively to population they furnish less than one per 
cent. Their influence in the progress of the world 
is therefore practically nil, although their capacities 
are the same as those of the higher classes, to whom, 
notwithstanding their small numbers, nearly all prog- 

[384] 



THE PURPOSE OF GOD 



ress is due. This is entirely the result of the social 
stratification caused by artificial inequalities. The 
abolition of social classes, could it be accomplished, 
would therefore increase the efficiency of mankind at 
least one hundredfold.^ 

This means that defective social selection, through false 
tradition and unequal environment, is robbing the race 
of most of its natural human wealth. However important, 
then, the improvement of the breed through eugenics, 
manifest duty and economy demand that society first cease 
to waste what it already has. 

Modem sociology, furthermore, comes squarely forward 

with an answer to the demand that the human stock be 

„ .., improved by the elimination of the unfit. 

Progress with- ^ ^ 

out Elimina- In the first place, do our best, we cannot 
tion through defeat the elimination of the least fit. Nature 
peremptorily dismisses them. That radi- 
cally defective individuals should not be allowed to repro- 
duce their kind, all agree. But the ordinary version of the 
doctrine of the survival of the fit attacks whole classes 
and races of probably average natural capacity. It 
proceeds upon the false assumption that those are unfit 
who could not survive the struggle for existence on the 
brute or savage plane ; or, more moderately, under Ameri- 
can pioneer conditions, or under such suppressive social 
institutions as, for example, the negro experiences in the 
South. But life is no longer under such conditions — at 
least necessarily. We have a new basis of civilization, 
" a kingdom of man," in which environment has been 
radically changed so that more and more of those who 
formerly were doomed to death are now adapted to sur- 

* American Journal of Sociology, " Social Classes in the Light of Modern 
Sociological Theory," vol. xiii, p. 627. 

25 [ 385 ] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

vival. Fitness always means fitness under given condi- 
tions. Artificial modifications have become permanent and 
therefore natural. The stall-fed ox would be no equal 
competitor with Ursus of the ice age, nor could it endure 
exposure with the cattle of the Montana range; but it 
will never have to; domestication is its permanent lot. 
Weaker than its ancestors, it is better and fitter to sur- 
vive under present conditions. Similarly — to borrow 
Professor Patten's illustration — it is useless to "toughen" 
a child by making him go barefooted in the winter. The 
ability so to do is no superiority in a race which for good 
and all has adopted shoes and stockings. The efficient 
strength of the civiHzed man is greater than that of the 
savage, though the former is not adapted to survival in 
the jungle. Resources are now funded and may continue 
to be so indefinitely. " None of us liveth to himself." 
Under a life more fully socialized, the human units are not 
only individually sounder and more potent relative to their 
environment, but, also, in combination, even weakness is 
made strength. Thus for a long, long time, and with no 
limit which we can see, civilization may maintain its 
standard and still admit to privilege an immeasurable 
number of the now disinherited classes. 

Such a society will not merely have physical and moral 
health; it will possess also the inner forces of progress. 
Suppressed genius will be unloosed for its enrichment ; 
and, through organization, the present supply of genius 
will be made instantly serviceable to the world at large. 

When culture becomes cosmopolitan, as it is to-day, 
the success of a race turns much more on the efficiency 
of its average units than on the inventions and dis- 
coveries of its geniuses. The heaven-sent man who 
invents the locomotive, or the dynamo, or the germ 

[386 1 



THE PURPOSE OF GOD 



theory, confers thereby no exclusive advantage on his 
people, or his race. So perfect is intellectual com- 
merce, so complete is the organization of science, that 
almost at once the whole civilized world knows and 
profits by his achievements. Nowadays the pioneer- 
ing genius belongs to mankind.^ 

Thus any man, group, or race which shall prove capable 
of serving the present age may be preserved without fear 
of his influence upon the future. 

Of revolutionary significance for problems of race is 

Sc' ffi O t'- sociology's extension to despised backward 

mism concern- peoples of the principles of j udgment which 

ing Backward she applies to the disinherited classes in white 

civilization. Thus Ross says: 

Social psychology ignores uniformities arising di- 
rectly or indirectly out of race endowment — negro 
volubility, gipsy nomadism, Malay vindictiveness, 
Singhalese treachery, Magyar passion for music, 
Slavic mysticism, Teutonic venturesomeness, Ameri- 
can restlessness. How far such common characters 
are really racial in origin and how far merely social, 
is a matter yet to be settled. Probably they are 
much less congenital than we love to imagine. "Race" 
is the cheap explanation tyros offer for any collec- 
tive trait that they are too stupid or too lazy to 
trace to its origin in the physical environment, the 
social environment, or historical conditions.^ 

In some quarters the whole science of sociology is now 
written without resort to the word or idea of race. So- 
called " races " are regarded as merely human groups with 

* Ross, " Foundations of Sociology," pp. S74, 375. 

* American Journal of Sociology, "Social Psychology," ch. i, vol. IS, 
p. 578. 

[387] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

special histories, temporary environmental marks, and 
signs of common social lot. Their heredity does not 
especially need improvement; it is already as good as the 
human average to which nature ever pulls back her more 
precocious children. Their special characteristics are easily 
modifiable. The gains of genius from any human quarter 
are easily transmissible to them. The uncontrollable 
powers of nature are as apt to fight for as against them, 
spontaneous variation being quite capable of bringing 
good out of Nazareth. What they need is to have ad- 
verse social pressure taken off, and to have the forces 
of social control exercised in their behalf. This is no in- 
terference with nature but the expression of the true 
nature of the human world as revealed by social control 
following Christian ideals. 

IV. THE PURPOSE OF GOD AND THE RACE 
QUESTION 

If God is the ruler of the universe it is proper to ex- 
pect to find some indication of his purpose in the natural 
Futility of tendencies of things. The argument of this 

Scientific Ver- book has been that these tendencies are not 

ic s o con- unfavorable to the backward peoples, and do 
vince concern- . . . 

ing Human not forbid the effort to assimilate them to 

Issues American civilization under the ideals of 

democracy and of Christian brotherhood. When the so- 
cial distortions of their natures are removed, all stocks 
and varieties of men express full human capacity and show 
promise that ultimately the downmost may be raised to 
participation in the life of the highest. To this effect 
we read the reasonable verdict of science. 

We do not expect this reading of the verdict, however, 

[388] 



THE PURPOSE OF GOD 



to convince those who on instinctive and dogmatic grounds 
deny the possibility of a democracy across the color-line. 
Not one human conviction in ten thousand is actually 
arrived at on scientific grounds. It was confessed at the 
outset that the argument could expect only to clear away 
certain intellectual difficulties for those who want to be- 
lieve the best for all men. It will not move the South — 
the South where thousands of earnest Christians passion- 
ately hold that the inexorable laws of the universe doom 
the negro to hopeless inferiority ; that its irreversible 
processes condemn him to extinction ; and that the at- 
tempt to raise him (" above his natural station ") is 
contending against the purpose of God. They cling, 
therefore, with desperation to the policy of social separa- 
tion, fearing that any relaxation of it will mean inter- 
marriage and the deterioration of the white race. Suppose 
that, scientifically, they were right and we wrong? What 
would we do about it.'' 

Having honestly attempted to put myself in the atti- 
tude of a Christian Southerner, I believe that there are 
Two more ^^'^ considerations that go deeper than any- 

Fundamental thing by which he thinks to justify the racial 
Considerations: policy of his section, or of any other like- 
and pLali?" ^ minded Anglo-Saxon group. First, the dig- 
of Personal nity and finality of personal solutions of hu- 
Solutions jjjg^jj problems. Whenever a negro has achieved 

character and self-respect; whenever he has reared a 
home, brought up children, acquired a modest competency, 
done useful work, counted on the side of social order, kept 
courage in his own soul and brought cheer to his fellows, 
honored God in his heart and in the deeds of his earthly 
pilgrimage, then the fashion and force of such a life has 
raised it above race barriers. And whenever a white man, 

[389 1 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

the master of like achievements (and none can do more than 
these) has looked upon his negro brother without scorn, 
reverencing in him the same struggle and victory that 
he knows in himself, appreciating, yes and loving, the 
simple, effective goodness of him and the glory of his as- 
piration, then the galling, maiming, fatal aspect of the 
race issue is obliterated. Whenever these two men, dis- 
regarding classifications and traditions in the presence of 
vital experience, see eye to eye, so far as men may, un- 
derstanding each other in part, and for the rest bowing 
before the mystery of the unique selfhood of each soul, 
the race problem is altogether solved. Any one may solve 
it who will — a case at a time. It is solved between the 
Texas judge and his " Ned, nigger and gentleman." 
Wisely said Chancellor Barrows of the University of 
Georgia at the inauguration of a Northern white presi- 
dent over a negro university, " Forget race : think only 
of the individual." Whoever does this in one case, giving 
the individual simply and completely a standing of indi- 
vidual worth, is beyond challenge. The case does not con- 
flict with racial verdicts of science, for or against; it is 
simply outside of them. 

Now, such saving personal adjustments are everywhere 
admitted. They are infinitely more common South than 
North, and are the moral leaven of the race situation. 
Nothing could do the Northern philanthropist more good 
than to learn the cordial, affectionate, thoroughgoing 
Southern appreciation of the individual negro and the 
genuine equity of some of its relations with him. But, 
theoretically speaking, such adjustments are disregarded 
as exceptions. 

But what is an exception? In answering we will doubt- 
less be accused of lugging in a whole philosophy by the 

[390] 



THE PURPOSE OF GOD 



^ . . ears. Not so ; for in any attempt at a 

iyxceptions are . -^ \ 

the Founda- thorough-going answer a whole philosophy 
tion-Stones of plunges in, inevitably, of its own accord. As 
we understand the nature of the universe, 
whenever any " two of you shall agree on earth as touch- 
ing anything " — whenever personalities, respecting and 
inviting each other to express whatever there is in them, 
come to an untrammeled, vital adjustment, there is created 
a new center of being and energy. Such a contract is a bit 
of the real thing — Reahty itself — and whatever else 
exists is only more of the same sort. All that appears as 
" star " or " sun," all that operates as the " tendency of 
nature," or lords it as " law," is at bottom some adjust- 
ment of personalities. Here is a process which cuts under 
any other. Was there a law of nature to the contrary a 
moment ago.f^ It is now abrogated by the original and 
underived sovereignty of the two who agree. Vast and 
venturesome language, this? At least it is time we were 
learning it. Too long have we been kept by conceptual 
scarecrows from the dearest of human possessions — the 
possibility of universal brotherhood. " Race," a mere 
word ; a classificatory device intended as a labor-saving in- 
strument of human thought ; a generic term, used of 
masses but true of no single individual, has fooled us into 
unmanly slavery. Philosophically speaking, race does not 
exist but only individuals. 

"For there is neither East nor West — 
Border nor breed nor birth; 
When two strong men meet face to face, 
Though they come from the ends of the earth." 

This is not poetical " bluff " ; it is the direct and logical 
outcome of a philosophy which believes that personalities 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

are the ultimate stuff of the universe, and that in their 
mutual interactions the world is a-making. 

There is another side to this doctrine. Whoever forces 
an adjustment with another personality which denies the 
full nature and right of both; whoever overbears the 
essential dignity of his brother's aspiration, and has con- 
tempt for its unique sanctity, he also creates a fragment 
of Reality, but creates it wrong. There is no blacker 
sin than contempt. " Whosoever shall say to his brother, 
Thou fool, shall be in danger of the hell of fire." That 
race antipathy is deeply entrenched in the universe we 
have no mind to deny ; we only deny that it is entrenched 
behind unyielding laws of nature. Its actual citadel is 
the unbrotherly spirit, the stubborn and baffling fact of 
which we dramatize as the Problem of Evil. 

This introduces the second consideration, which I ven- 
ture to think goes deeper than any of the philosophical 
2 Th F' 1 foundations of the South's race policy, 
Solution not namely, that the existence of evil in the 
an Explanation universe presents a moral dilemma of which 
the final solution is not an explanation but 
a choice. Some of us believe that the order of nature 
is for us and for human hope; but if not we would go 
on doing just as we are doing. 

We do not for a moment admit that the trend of natu- 
ral processes has to be identified with the purpose of 
God. We do not find complete moral unity in the universe 
as it stands. It seems to us there is some real evil in it. 
Admitting that, we do not feel under obligation to wor- 
ship anything which looks like evil. In a universe in 
which one slaps a mosquito, he reserves the right to take 
issue with the law of gravitation, if need be. A big 
mosquito is not God; a big evil is not holy. The bigger, 

[392] 



THE PURPOSE OF GOD 



the worse ! If cruelty has entrenched itself in the processes 
of nature, so much the worse for them. We will follow 
the impulse of brotherhood against evolution as quickly 
as with it. Who says we must knuckle down to the phys- 
ical universe.'' We simply do not know yet how far it will 
prove plastic to moral effort ; therefore we will make the 
hypothesis of faith, " He has put all things under his 
feet." That this is faith, not demonstration, we cheer- 
fully confess. "We see not yet all things subjected to 
him, but we see Jesus," and choose to take his part who- 
ever or whatever is against him. 

Is there other ground of hope for anybody .'' Is Anglo- 
Saxon salvation based on the shape of the skull.'' Was 
Salvation for science crucified for you or were you bap- 
All if for Any tized into the name of anthropology? As 
a mortal man, is the white less transient and futile than 
the black? Has he any special revelation, a peculiar 
demonstrable clue to the mystery of life? When the 
author of " The Color-Line " dismisses negro optimism 
with the assertion " that the hopefulness of the majority is 
quite artificial, based on some rehgious faith or moral trust, 
and that the really weighty answers are given by the 
hopeless minority," ^ does he really mean to say that his 
own exceeding confidence in the earthly future of the 
white races is not also artificial in the sense that it is 
based on " some rehgious faith or moral trust " ? If not, 
on what, pray, is it based? I at least know nothing 
beyond the apostle's plea: 

Who shall change our vile body, that it may be 

fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to 

the working whereby he is able even to subdue all 

things unto himself. 

» Smith, "The Color-Lin e." p. 177. 

[393] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

If this avails for any, it may for all; it cannot be 
bounded by the color of the skin. 

If, then, the most unfriendly anthropology should tri- 
umph over the lower races ; if they were scientifically 
Facing the branded unfit; if it were certain that their 

Alternative participation in our civilization meant a low- 

ered physical stamina, a decreasing mental capacity, an 
increasing moral tragedy for all, we would still carry 
out the program of the gospel at any cost. We may be 
beside ourselves, but " the love of Christ constraineth us ; 
because we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all 
died; and he died for all, that they that live should no 
longer live unto themselves, but unto him who for their 
sakes died and rose again. Wherefore we henceforth 
know no man after the flesh." 

I have held in my hand the diary of Snelling. With 
a dozen Micronesians, including women and children, he 
was lost while making an evangelistic tour of scattered 
islands, and drifted in an open boat for fifty-one days. 
With vivid simplicity the daily entries tell how they starved 
to death and kept the faith. As the end approaches, the 
few survivors are practically crazy, and he in a delirium 
of worship, praising God and gasping Ufe away. I do 
not count that an inglorious end. I would be willing to 
have humanity finish earth like that! 

Humanity is out on the uncharted bosom of the uni- 
verse in as frail a boat, a huddle of black, white, red, and 
yellow. They do not know that any of them will get to 
land. Science least of all guarantees it. We live by 
faith. 

The white man might throw the colored man overboard 
— though since the Japanese-Russian war it 's a ques- 
tion who 'd go over first ; but craft might prevail against 

[394] 



THE PURPOSE OF GOD 



numbers ; the wliite man might take all the food for him- 
self ; it might sustain life until land appears ; he might 
reach his desired haven. Suppose he could. 

In a recent magazine story, Bully McLean, the " bucko- 
mate," finds a similar problem confronting him: 

The captain raised his voice and called to the mate 
to come aft. 

" All right. Captain, I 'm coming," bawled the mate. 
*' Shake her up, now, you lubbers ; and don't you stop 
work, or I '11 be the death of you. Walk her round, 
bullies ! I '11 be back in a brace of shakes." 

As he waited, the captain wondered how the mate 
would take the proposal to abandon the ship and 
leave the blacks to drown. Bully McLean hated all 
negroes, he knew — hated them whole-heartedly and 
impartially, because a gang of them had once tried 
to murder him in Baltimore. Indeed, he had shipped 
in the Brynhilda only to get a chance, as he expressed 
it, " to bullyrag a crowd of bloody blacks and raise 
Cain and kill Injuns generally." But then, these 
bucko-mates were not without a code of honor of 
their own, and one could not always forecast their 
conduct under given circumstances. 

" What do you want, Captain } I can't leave those 
black rascals long." 

The captain, suddenly confronted by the towering 
form of the first officer, asked nervously how much 
water there was in the hold. 

" About six feet, but not gaining as fast as it 
was." 

" She '11 go down pretty soon now," said the old 
man ; " and I guess — I think we 'd better abandon 
her at once." 

" Well, I '11 get the other boats over, then ; but 
I think we could keep her afloat till daylight." 

[895] 



CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 

" The other boats are smashed up," the captain 
said hurriedly, hoarsely. " No use to launch them." 

" Well, that 's bad," commented the mate quietly. 
" The quarter-boat won't carry all hands." 

" No. It '11 hold the white crowd, but not the 
niggers. We '11 have to leave them." 

" What.'^ You mean the afterguard are to save 
themselves and leave the crew to drown .? " 

" There 's nothing else to do. Mate. All hands 
can't go in the boat, and white men take precedence 
over black." 

" Well, Captain," said the mate coolly, " you can 
do what you please, but I stand by the crew. What 
a captain's duty under the circumstances may be is 
not for me to say ; but a mate's first duty is to his 
ship, and his second to his crew, white or black. If 
I saved my life by leaving my crew to drown, I 'd 
never be able to — to hold up my head again among 
honest men." 

The captain emitted an energetic grunt, then mut- 
tered bitterly : " Oh, yes ; a captain should go down 
with his ship — that is all very fine, very heroic. 
But when a man has a wife and children dependent 
on him he 's got to think of the bread-and-butter 
aspect of things." 

" Maybe so — maybe so ; it 's all in the point of 
view, I dare say." ^ 

" It 's all in the point of view " ; the Judgment Day is 
no more. There is a point of view which thinks it sees 
that there is one moral law for the individual and another 
for the race; that the latter must save itself at all costs.^ 
Authority cannot settle that issue; it is a matter of 
moral taste, of an inner sense of the fitness of things. 

• McClure's Magazine, vol. xxx, p. 694. 
2 See Smith, " The Color-Line," p. 190. 

[ 396 ] 



THE PURPOSE OF GOD 



We can merely testify to our point of view. Whatever 
the duty of captains it seems to an every-day mate not 
worth while to live at the expense of his crew — white 
or black. 

See the other alternative! In the splendor of morning 
the super-man stands in blonde glory on a fairer shore 
Man and than ever man trod. He builds his new life 

Super-man as far above ours as ours above the brutes. 

Intellect is ennobled, beauty perfected, gentleness en- 
throned. Women are more glorious than any dream, and 
all men walk in kingly freedom. They look into each 
other's faces, white and glowing, and are happy — until 
they go out to meet the silent and unwearied contempt 
of the stars, to hear all the sounding voices of the seas 
cry, " Where is thy brother.? " The finest breed of human 
animals may inhabit a moral hell. Better be lost on the 
pitiless waters, starving with a huddle of colored folks, 
delirious but not despicable, agonizing but not ashamed. 
For not idly is it written, " It is better for thee to enter 
into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell." 
And what shall it profit the Anglo-Saxon if he gain the 
whole world and lose his own soul.'* 



[397] 



INDEX 



INDEX* 



Abbott, Lyman, quoted, 270 
Academic and Industrial School, 

Kowaliga, Ala., 136 
Adams, Samuel Hopkins, quoted, 

178 
Africa and African traits, 117, 141, 

197, 234, 248 
Agriculture in South, 52, 107, 133, 

146, 190, 233, 247 ff. 
Alabama, 47, 66, 69, 73, 122, 136, 

137, 140, 147, 150, 219, 263, 

304, 
Alaska, 23 
Alderman, President E. A., 50, 55, 

56, 111, 113, 121, 174, 185 
Aliens, congestion of, in cities, 26 
Allen Normal School, Thomas- 

ville, Ga., 87, 95, 215, 239 
Alston, Leonard, quoted, 117 
Amalgamation of races, 31, 32. 

Vide Miscegenation 
American Indians, 20, 23, 29, 45, 

62, 300, 314, 320 
American Missionary Associa- 
tion, vii, 34, 36, 40, 62, 73, 87, 

90, 132, 135, 158, 161, 209 ff., 268, 

289, 291, 351, 352 ff. 
American Negro Academy, Publica- 
tions of, 267 
Anglo-Saxon, 112 
Appalachian Mountains, 80, 304 ff., 

308 ff., 312 
Arkansas, 46, 53, 236 
Armstrong, Samuel Chapman, 265, 

268 ff. 
Asheville, 80, 304 



Athletics for negro, 255 

Atlanta Theological Seminary, 
Atlanta, Ga., 363 

Atlanta University, 210, 214, 241, 
243, 247, 252 

Atlanta University Publications, 
quoted, 150, 151, 153, 155, 156, 
158, 275 

Avery Normal iNSTrruTE, Charles- 
ton, S. C, 228, 256 

Baker, Ray Stannard, quoted, 42, 

85, 105, 221, 369 
Ballard Normal School, Macon. 

Ga., 224, 228 
Banks and savings institutions, 142, 

147 
Baptists, 148, 150, 151, 152; 154, 

155, 159, 209, 259 
Barrows, Chancellor, 390 
Beach Institute, Savannah, Ga., 

175, 225, 227, 228 
Beachton School, Beachton, Ga., 

214 
Berea College, 210, 212, 316, 320, 

362, 365 
"Black Belt," 72, 81, 86, 136, 210, 

218, 219 
Black Mountain Academy, Evarts, 

Ky., 313, 328 
Border States, 100 
Bowman, Rev. Charles E., quoted, 

60 
Bratten, Bishop, quoted, 115 
Brev^^er Normal School, Green- 
wood, S. C, 236 



' For the convenience of those wishing to make a detailed study of the American 
Missionary Association, titles relating directly to its work are capitalized. 

[401] 



INDEX 



Brick School, Enfield, N. C, 38, 

132, 251, 257, 262, 291 
Brigham, Albert P., quoted, 19, 54, 

307 
"Brown Fellowship," 75 
Brown, William G., 78 
Brunner, Dr. W. F., quoted, 175 
Bryce, James, 71, quoted, 112, 113 
Building and Loan Associations, 

143, 162 

Calhoun, John C, 267 
Calhoun School, 137 
Canada, negro refugees in, 62 
Carmack, Senator, x 
Carnegie Building, 38, 242, 362 
Carver, Professor George N., 42 
Census Bulletin, quoted, 171, 305 
Charleston. S. C, 74, 104, 177 
Charleston News and Courier, 

quoted, 54 
Chattanooga Tradesman, 190 
Child labor, 186, 337, 356 
Christianity and race problems, 

367 ff. 
Church as Americanizing agency, 

58 
Cities, problems of negroes in, 163, 

254 
"Color line," 101, 105, 116 ff. 
Columbia State, quoted, 103, 189 
Commissioner of Education, reports 

referred to, 47, 49, 51, 52, 100, 210 
Commons, Professor John R., quoted, 

21, 24, 31, 32, 81, 122, 188, 191 
Competition between races, 106, 

120, 183, 185 
Conference of Education in the 

South, 64, 157 
Congregationalists, 90, 152, 156, 

159, 160, 161, 163, 164, 227, 232, 

359, 363, 379 
Consultative Committee on Higher 

Elementary Education, 280, 282 



Cooperation, economic, 121, 143; 

in education, 63 
Cotton, 71, 73, 79, 136, 146, 336 
Cotton Valley School, Fort Davis, 

Ala., 220 
Criminals, negro, 37, 75, 82, 135, 

164, 198, 202 
Crummell, Alexander, quoted, 267 

Davis, Jefferson, 66, 102 
Death-rate, 75, 82, 168, 206, 226 
Democracy, 28, 30, 32, 34, 64, 125, 

295 ff., 382 ff. 
Denominational boards, 61 
Department of Agriculture, 71; 

Year Book of, quoted, 52, 53 
Destiny of negro. 206, 338 ff. 
Deveaux, Colonel, 226 
Dewey, Professor John, quoted, 266 
Distribution of population, 72, 132 
District of Columbia, 140 
Dixon, Thomas, 103 
Domestic science, education in, 249, 

352 ff. 
Dorchester Academy, Mcintosh, 

Ga., 232, 235 
Dowd, Jerome, quoted, 184 
DuBois, Professor W. E. B., 115, 

135, 164, 165, 252, 372 
Dunbar, Paul L., the poet, 164 

Education, in Northern States, 47, 
51 ; in Southern States, 47, 51, 
55, 57, 58; principles of, in a 
democracy, 34, 57, 64, 278 ff., 
295 ff . ; of negro (see Negro edu- 
cation) ; as served by negro edu- 
cational experiments, 265, 281 

"Educational Revival," 57 

Emerson Institute, Mobile, Ala., 
140 

Entertainment for the negro, 255 

Episcopal Church, 59, 95, 104, 152, 
154, 156, 209, 227 



[402] 



INDEX 



Ewing, l^v. Quincy, quoted, ix 
Extension work, 257 

Faduma, Rev. O., 158 

"Farmers' Day," 262 

Farmville, Va., 150 

Fessenden Academy, Fessenden, 

Fla., 37, 236 
Fifteenth Amendment, 123 
FisK University, Nashville, Tenn., 

100, 132, 163, 215, 241, 242, 243, 

246, 247, 252, 291 
Fleming, Walter, quoted, 73, 124 
Florida, 37 
Forests, 54, 72 
Fox, John, 316, 325, 326, 328, 

347 
Freedman's Bureau, 63, 268 
Friends, Society of, 209 
FrisseU, Principal, 289 
Frontier, social effects of, 25 

Galloway, Bishop, quoted, 115 
General Education Board, 65, 351 
Geographic divisions in South, 66, 

69, 70, 304 ff. 
Georgia, 60, 73, 86 ff., 100, 122, 123, 

124, 134, 146, 152, 163, 172, 174, 

175, 185, 209, 224, 226, 232, 235, 

292, 304, 310 
Georgia Medical Association, 89 
German elements, 68 
Giddings, Professor Franklin, quoted, 

182 
Girls' Industrial School, Moor- 
head, Miss., 264 
Gloucester Co., Va., 135 
Gloucester High and Industrial 

School, Cappahosic, Va., 135, 

143, 236 
Gr,\nd View Normal Institute, 

Grand View, Tenn., 348, 353 
Group-economy, 84, 93, 96, 142, 

146, 165 



Hall, President G. Stanley, quoted, 

297 
Hampton Institute, 13J, 210, 232, 

251, 265, 268, 270, 274, 288, 289, 

290, 291, 294 
Hargis, Judge, 66, 326 
Harlan Co., Ky., 311 
Hart, Professor A. B., 28, 74 
Hawaii, 22 
Health of negro, 118, 168, 171 ff., 

256 ff. 
Highland College, Williamsburg, 

Ky., 365 
Hill, O. J., 190 
Hillsboro School, Hillsboro, N. C, 

218 
Hoffman, Frederick H., quoted, 

185, 189 
Holloway, Rev. William H., xii, 86, 

96 
Howard University, Washington, 

D. C, 161, 210, 240, 241, 249 
Hutchinson, Dr. Woods, quoted, 

254 
Hyde, President W. D., 273 

Idaho, 132 

Illiteracy of negro, 46, 55 ; of South- 
ern whites, 46, 305, 310 

Imitation, psychology of, 129 

Immigration to United States, 20, 
26, 121, 145 

Immigration Congress, 107, 190 

Inborden, Principal T. S., 257 ff. 

Indian Territory, 46 

Industrial Education, history of, 

268 ff . ; theoretical considerations, 

269 ff . ; European experience with, 
279, 281 ff. 

Inefficiency, psychology of, 292 
Insurance, negro and, 94, 142, 

147 
Iowa, 48, 50, 132 
Itahans, 105, 190, 191, 192 



403 



INDEX 



Jamaica, 62 
Jeanes Board, 120 
Jefferson, Thomas, 23, 63 
Jews, 26, 29, 105 
Jonesboro (Temi.) School, 132 

Kelsey, Professor Carl, xii, quoted, 

36, 72, 81 
Kentucky, 47, 55, 69, 100, 304, 310, 

320, 339, 341 
Kowaliga enterprise, vide Academic 

and Industrial School, Kowaliga, 

Ala. 

Labor problem and race conflict, 
77, 92, 106, 121, 145 

Land, how negroes acquire, 136, 
258 ff. 

Lee, R. E., 66 

Le Moyne Institxjte, Memphis, 
Tenn., 228, 255, 256, 257 

Library, Pubhc, 257 

Lincoln, Abraham, 66, 117, 331, 362 

Lincoln Academy, King's Moun- 
tain, N. C, 236 

Lincoln Normal School, Marion, 
Ala., 236, 263 

Louisiana, 46, 53, 108, 161, 236 

Lumber industry, 347 

Ltnn School, Lynn, N. C, 356 

Maryland, 304 

Massachusetts, 47, 49, 278 

Massachusetts Commission on In- 
dustrial Education, quoted, 279, 
281, 284, 285, 286 

Mathers, Sir William, quoted, 284 

Mayo, Dr. A. D., quoted, 209 

Mayor's Report, Savannah, Ga., 
quoted, 179, 209 

Memphis, Tenn., 255, 257 

Methodist Episcopal Church, negro, 
148, 150, 154, 155, 159, 209; 
Southern, 59, 60 ; Northern, 156 



Miles, Mrs., quoted, 322, 328, 343 

Miller, Professor Kelly, quoted, 159, 
275, 294 

Millsaps, Major R. W., 41 

Miscegenation, 104, 238 

Missions and missionaries, compe- 
tency of testimony, 35, 43; to 
various regions of United States, 
45; in South, 59, 61; in negro 
education, 209 ff, ; to Appalachian 
Highlanders, 350 ff . ; various ac- 
tivities of, 36, 63, 209 ff. 

Mississippi, 41, 54, 55, 71, 72, 100, 
105, 132, 191, 209, 236, 264, 275, 
278 

Missouri, 20, 46 

Mobihty of negro, 81, 120, 132, 194 

Montana, 132 

Movements of population, 79, 81 

Mulatto, 74, 85, 244, 381 

Murphy, Rev. Edgar Gardner, 
quoted, 40, 126, 207 

National Educational Association 
Report, quoted, 48 

National Playground Association, 
254 

"Negro a Beast," pamphlet, 114 

Negro, alleged shortcomings of, 
166 ff.; physical, 171 ff.; eco- 
nomic, 183 ff.; moral, 114, 198 ff.; 
explanation as racial traits, 205 ff. 

Negro, American; numbers, 23, 46, 
55, 62, 132, 166; occupations of, 
38, 82, 91, 133, 183, 226; farmer, 
42, 134, 185, 193; tenant, 89, 
220, 258 ff. ; domestic servant, 40, 
238, 239; artisan, 38, 40, 82, 
97; professions, 83, 90, 93, 97, 
226, 247 ff., 274; ministers, 90, 
248, 362; business, 37, 38, 40, 
42, 74, 89, 91, 98, 107, 190, 191, 
202, 226; federal service, 90, 
140; material progress of, 74, 



404] 



INDEX 



87, 88, 204, 219, 226; ownership 
of property, 88, 134 flF., 162, 219, 
232, 233; landlords, 234; wealth, 
76, 139, 219; institutions, 60, 95, 
140 ff., 209 ff.. 234, 257; home 
and family, 85, 88, 141, 186, 201; 
marriage, 85, 88, 141 ; economic 
institutions, 94, 142 S. ; publica- 
tions, 151, 267; churches and 
religion, 148, 152 ff. ; schools sus- 
tained by, 60, 100, 209 ff.; phi- 
lanthropies, 95, 119, 164; social 
classes, 75, 84, 120; race leaders, 
85, 119, 164, 265 ff., 360; public 
opinion toward, viii, 101, 102, 
104, 110, 113, 200 ff.; handicaps, 
116, 118, 169-170, 186, 187, 200 ff.; 
esthetic expression, 38, 83, 164, 
245 

Negro education, 47, 56, 209 ff.; 
ungraded, 213; elementary, 57, 
216 ff., 281, 288; secondary, 100, 
223 ff., 237 ff., 282, 288 ; collegiate, 
90, 240 ff. ; professional, 90, 248 ff. ; 
industrial and agricultural, 215, 
223, 230, 250 ff., 271 ff.; contro- 
versy over, 57, 211, 271 ff.; diffu- 
sion and concentration of schools, 
210 ff., 240, 361, 362; discipline, 
244; equipment, 242; constitu- 
ency, 243 

"Negro, new," 85 

Negro women, numerical excess of, 
200; moral peril of, 117, 200, 
222, 237; as breadwinners, 83, 
89, 179, 186; education of, 237 ff., 
249 ft'. ; organized activities of, 
95, 142, 164; as home-makers, 
vide Negro, American, home and 
family 

New Mexico, 46 

Normal and Industrial Col- 
legiate Institute, Joppa, Ala., 
354 



North Carolina, 46, 68, 69, 73, 100, 
132, 137, 158, 160, 218, 275, 304, 
310, 338 

Northern people, attitude of, toward 
negro, 117, 166; toward the 
South, \'ii 

Northern States, wealth, 50; edu- 
cation (see Education in) ; com- 
parative progress, 47-51 

Norwood, Judge, 197 

Nurses, training, 250 

Ogden parties, vii 

Ohio, 66 

Oklahoma, 101, 132 

Orientals in America, 24, 29, 45, 

105, 367 
Oyster industry, 135 

Page, Thomas Nelson, 125 
Parks and playgrounds, 254 
Patten, Professor Simon R., quoted, 

142, 145, 196, 380, 386 
Payne, Bishop Daniel, 149 
Peabody Academy, Troy, N. C, 

158 
Peabody Fund, 351 
Peabody, George F., 64, 243 
Pearsons, Dr., 362 
Pennsylvania, 67 
Peonage in South, 188 
Physiography, 68, 69, 71, 73 
Piedmont College, Demorest, Ga., 

358, 362 
Piedmont region, 56, 67, 72, 81, 218, 

312 
Pilgrim Fathers, 17 
Plato, quoted, 120 
Pleasant Hill Academy, Pleasant 

Hill, Tenn., 352 
PoUtics, negro and, 122, 124 
"Poor white," 75, 77, 102 
Porto Rico, 22 
Pou, Hon. James E., quoted, 137 



405] 



INDEX 



Presbyterian Chiu"ch, Southern, 59, 

154, 159, 209 
Price, Principal, 143 
Proctor, Rev. H. H., 163 
"Prophet of the Great Smoky 

Mountains, The," 76 
Psychology and race, 128, 196 
Public schools for negroes, 224, 227 

Quakers, 68 

Race and race problems, ix, 28, 

99, 116, 206, 367 tf. 
Race consciousness, 93, 101 
Races in America, 68 
Reading-rooms, 257 
Refugees, negro, 62, 216 
Reversion of race, 234 
Rockingham (N. C.) Church, 160 
Roosevelt, O., President, 110, 254, 

370 
Rose, Professor Wycliffe, quoted, 

49 
Ross, Professor E. A., quoted, 76, 

118, 128, 170, 171, 181, 185, 387 
Rural conditions and problems, 49, 

230 ff. 
Russell, Assistant Attorney-General, 

quoted, 188 

Saluda Seminaby, Saluda, N. C, 

357 
Savannah, Ga., 174, 197, 198, 202, 

225, 226 
Scotch-Irish, 67. 68 
Secret societies, 142 
Segregation, 84, 87, 96, 119 
Selection, biological, 373 ff . ; social, 

78, 84, 377 ff. 
Sex and race, 109 

Shaler, Professor N. S., quoted, 184 
Slavery, 23, 33, 34, 69, 74 
Smith, Governor Hoke, 122, 287, 



Smith, Professor W. B., quoted, 128, 
173, 393, 396 

Social classes, 278 

"Social equality," 110 

Sociology and race doctrines, 75, 
114, 128, 141, 205 ff. 

Soil survey, 71, 74 

South Atlantic Quarterly, viii, xi 

South CaroHna, 55, 103, 189, 304, 
310 

Southern churches, characteristics, 
58 ; work for negroes, 59 

Southern Educational Association, 
quoted, 295, 297, 310 

Southern Immigration Congress, 107 

Southern Mountaineers, 56-70, 
304 ff.; history of, 19, 69, 130, 
318; social types and diversities, 
80, 306 ff., 317-334; in politics, 
69, 320; in industry, 335 ff.; effect 
of recent movements upon, 79, 
332 ; missionary work for, 62, 63, 
343, 350 ff . ; esthetic expression, 
325 

Southern States, geographical variety, 
66, 70 ; natural resources, 50 ; com- 
position of population, 75 ; poUti- 
cal and social traits and tendencies, 
77, 100; educational problems of, 
46, 224; race problem in, 99 ff., 
119 ff. ; racial creed of, 114 ff., 226, 
238, 263, 270, 287 

Southern Workman, quoted, 135 

Speer, Judge Emory, 185 

Standard of hving, 194 

State as Americanizing agency, 57, 
251, 296 

"State of Frankhn," 76 

Statistics, of negroes in United 
States, 132 ff. ; of Southern edu- 
cation; of comparative sectional 
progress; limitations of, 76 

Stewart, Professor J. S., quoted, 
293 



406] 



INDEX 



Stone, Alfred Holt, quoted, 33, 41, 
171, 172, 185, 191, 194 

Straight University, New Or- 
leans, La., 293, 256 

Student life, of negro, 238, 240 fF. 

Slpreme Court of South Carolina on 
labor contracts, 189 

Talladega Colf.ege, Talladega, 

Ala., 213, 241, 242, 243, 246, 247, 

248, 250, 252 
Tanner, H. O., the painter, 164 
Taylor, Coleridge, the composer, 

164 
Teachers, professional training of, 

240 ff., 247 ff. 
Temperance, 38, 258 
Tennessee, 48, 50, 69, 73, 100, 151, 

216, 257, 304, 310, 339, 341, 347 
Texas, 100, 101, 114, 211 
Thomas, Professor W. I., quoted, 

298, 299 
Thomas Co. (Ga.), churches of, 152 
Thomasville (Ga.), negroes of, 86 ff. 
Thompson, Holland, quoted, 68 
Tillinghast, Joseph A., quoted, 36, 

181 
Tillman, Senator Benjamin, 102, 

103 
Tillotson College, Austin, Texas, 

228 
Tougaloo U>avERSiTT, Tougaloo, 

Miss., 139, 161, 241, 247, 251, 

264 
Trade unions, 144, 226, 289 
Trinity School, Athens, Ala., 216 



"True Reformers," 147 

Turner, Frederick J., quoted, 67, 

68, 70 
Turpentine industrj-, 37 
Tuskegee Institute, 42, 219, 232, 

251, 268, 270, 272, 274, 287, 288, 

289, 290, 291, 294 

Vagrants, 37, 38 

Vardaman, Governor, quoted, ix, 

102 
Vice, 180, 198 ff. 
Virginia, 71, 81, 114, 135, 141, 143, 

146, 147, 153, 209, 211, 304, 310 
Vocational education, 247 ft'., 270, 

278, 280 

Ward, Professor Lester, quoted, 384 
Warner, Charles F., quoted, 284 
Washington, Principal Booker T., 

quoted, 110, 120, 157, 164, 165, 

167, 268 f!., 271, 286, 291, 372 
West Virginia, 69, 304, 310 
Whitt, Rev. M. W., 161 
Wilberforce University, 151 
Wiley, Principal, quoted, 39 
Willcox, Professor Walter F., 171, 

172, 173, 183 
Williams, Senator John Sharp, 103 
Wilson, President Samuel T., 307 
Women in labor problem, 77; in 

education, 277; progress of, 277, 

297, 301, 302 
Woodworth, President F. G., 161 
World's Work, quoted, 54, 55, 56, 

147 



[407] 

12487 212 



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